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#well it's a bit more complicated but essentially it's this
that-ari-blogger · 20 hours
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Inciting Incident (Thank Goodness)
One of the most popular songs in Wicked is sung by Galinda, and centres around the idea that the society she lives in is corrupt and that she is the only one who knows how it really works. But is she right about that? Does she actually know as much as she thinks?
I think the answer is complicated, and that's the fun of it. I think that Glinda has intellectually grasped that the system is flawed, but I don't think she's emotionally wrapped her head around it. Case and point, the complete and utter cognitive dissonance that is Thank Goodness.
Let me explain.
SPOILERS AHEAD: (Wicked, The Trekkie's Tale)
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Thank Goodness is actually two songs. Thank Goodness itself, and a reprise of No-one Mourns The Wicked. So, it's a rehashing of the first act, opening with Glinda conversing with the crowd, the difference is whether or not she is appearing to agree with it.
In the first Glinda tries to argue for Elphaba's morality, and it frames the entire story. But now, Glinda stands idly by and goes along with all that the chorus says while they get more and more worked up by lies that she knows to be untrue.
You would think that the two segments of the song being in agreement would mean that they go well together, but they really don't. Thank Goodness and No-one Mourns The Wicked do not fit with each other at all, in my opinion.
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So, what does this mean?
I think that this song shows Glinda lying to herself, and finally starting to crack and realise what is happening.
Glinda spends this song deflecting from the problem, instead of confronting it head on. She relies on popularity and giving the people what they want to distract them.
My ex-girlfriend is being hunted by the masses for something she didn't do, but look over here, I'm getting married!
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"Like some terrible green blizzard
Throughout the land she flies
Defaming our poor Wizard
With her calumnies and lies!"
The obvious thing here is the tense. This is happening now, as opposed to something the characters have lived through and made it out the other side of. It is more immediate.
But the other thing that I want to point out is the wall that the Ozians are putting up. The reason Elphaba can't get through to anyone is because they think she is lying, because who are you more likely to believe, someone who you trust implicitly, or someone who everyone around you says is dangerous?
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The song is broken into four sections. The introduction, Glinda's two reflections, and Madame Morrible's story, which prompts her to change her mind a bit.
"When you bowed before his throne
He decreed you'd hence be known
As Glinda the Good, officially!"
The following is an excerpt from The Trekkie's Tale, a Star Trek fanfic first published in 1974.
"Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her...
"Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us."
This is the archetypal Mary Sue story, a format where the protagonist gets all that they want and more. The world revolves around Mary Sue, and as a result, it isn't particularly compelling. She wins everything, then she saves the day and dies, and everyone mourns her.
Nobody online seems to be able to agree on whether this story was a satire of general fanfiction trends or not, a fact that I find rather funny.
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But compare that to the story Madame Morrible is telling about Glinda. Allegedly, the wizard gave her the title for... not much actually. In Morrible's version of events, good people get things just because, and nobody is asking any questions.
Essentially, Glinda is getting all that she wants on a silver platter, with no questions asked, no strings attached. Well, one string attached.
"Then with a jealous squeal
The Wicked Witch burst from concealment
Where she had been lurking, surrpetitially!"
I mentioned in my post on Defying Gravity (maybe go check that one out) that the central conflict that ended Elphaba and Glinda's relationship was that Elphaba was prepared to sacrifice everything, and Glinda wasn't. But Glinda did have to give up something to achieve her dream, and I don't think she quite understood that until now. To get the power she craved, Glinda had to lose Elphaba.
This song is essentially bludgeoning Glinda over the head with the fact that this tradeoff was not worth it.
That is the dissonance inherent to Glinda's entire character. She recognises the flaws in the world around her but has convinced herself that it will be worth it when she gets to power.
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I don't think that Galinda would have realised this, and I am making a point of differentiating Glinda and Galinda. In my mind, Glinda is the version of this character who fell in love with and was changed by Elphaba. The two characters are incredibly similar, and one is an evolution of the other, but it is the influence of Elphaba that makes the difference.
Galinda was seeking power for the sake of it, a person who got her way because she couldn't understand anything else. But Elphaba changed that and gave her a purpose for seeking to climb the ladder. I think Glinda believed she could make a difference from within the structure of Oz, probably to help Elphaba.
Glinda has got everything she theoretically wanted, but at the behest of the reason she was doing it, and now that she is here, she can't even initiate the change she wanted to change. Glinda made the wrong choice, and is only now realising it.
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"We couldn't be happier
Right, dear?
Couldn't be happier
Right here
Look what we've got
A fairy-tale plot
Our very own happy ending."
If you are wondering why I've been leaving Glinda's monologues until the end, it is because they make my case for me, and make analysis rather difficult as a result. I have been saying over and over that this musical is about dreams and reality colliding, and that is explicitly stated in these verses.
The fact that there are two of these mirrors the two sides of Glinda's character. The first is the side that craves the attention and has got everything that she wants, then the song reminds her of Elphaba, and she tries again with a more nuanced perspective.
"Though it is, I admit
The tiniest bit
Unlike I anticipated
But I couldn't be happier
Simply couldn't be happier
Well - not simply
'Cause getting your dreams
It's strange, but it seems
A little, well, complicated"
This is literally what I've been saying. She's got what she wanted, but not in the way she wants. It's complicated, and that facade of hers is finally cracking.
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That duality is mirrored by the time signature, which is maddening. The song oscillates between a ton of different signatures, and if someone with more musical knowledge understands anything more about this than me, please give me a hand.
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From my, admittedly limited, understanding, this feels like a lack of surety. Glinda doesn't know what she wants or thinks anymore, so she can't decide what she is singing.
It also gives an incredibly informal tone, as the lack of structure matches how a person speaks, almost. There have been two characters who have distinct speech patterns in this musical, Madam Morrible, and Glinda. The script of both of whom is written in recurring patterns and rhythms, making up words to match the metre of their sentence. It's pompous and pseudointellectual.
This is most obvious in how smooth the start of Defying Gravity is. There, Glinda doesn't have to change how she talks to match the song, because she is already speaking in the right rhythm.
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Cynthia Erivo's rendition of this song in PBS's Wicked In Concert is phenomenal and I highly recommend you check it out, not least of all because removing the crowd gives the song a completely different vibe.
But here, halfway through a song, she gives up with artfulness and just speaks her mind. It's still a song, so you still get the rhythms and melodies, but that is breaking down, and is gone in the script from this point forwards. That's partially why I say Glinda and Galinda are different people, they sound different to each other.
There are a few almost exceptions to this rule, and I say almost exceptions because they come really close to breaking the mould, but don't.
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In this exception, Glinda is trying to convince herself that she is happy. The song is limited to one thought, the idea that Glinda should be happy, and there can't be anything wrong. She has got everything she wanted, and that would make her happy, right? Happy is what happens when all of your dreams... That's the word that throws her off, dreams.
This is no longer Glinda's dream.
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This song is a microcosm of Glinda's entire arc in the musical. She follows the story laid out for her, but is changed by the journey until it no longer fits. She has changed, and now she can't do anything about it.
Ironically, Glinda has gained all the authority she could dream of, but she is more powerless and has less agency than she started with, and all of that happened without her notice.
"There's a kind of a sort of, cost
There's a couple of things get, lost
There are bridges you cross
You didn't know you crossed
Until you've crossed."
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Final Thoughts
Genuinely, my favourite trope in a story is a character undergoing character development and not realising. For example, the "nobody's that heartless" line in The Emperor's New Groove.
But Glinda is my favourite example of this because of the way in which she reaches her conclusions. She is smart, possibly the most intelligent character in the entire musical, but her biases cause her to make some serious leaps of logic and ignore several things that would change her worldview until she runs headfirst into them.
Also, the stagecraft of this song is simple in order to not distract from Glinda's thoughts, but that means a lot of these photos are remarkably similar. I apologise for that.
Next week, I will be looking at Wonderful, and how it forms a neat little mirror of Sentimental Man, so stick around if that interests you.
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Thinking about my kirby oc to distract myself from the horrors <3
#Kirby oc: Terra Knight#I’be been redesigning him a bit as well as fleshing out his relationship with his daughter#as well as in general exploring what happened while TK was working for Haltman#TK and Haltman were somewhat friends and the more that he lost his mind it made TK sad but he stood by him as things got worse#Terra is a really ambiguous person because he’s really loyal and passionate about knowledgebut he also condones planetary destruction SOOOOO#things at HWC get more complicated when Susie arrives#TK and Susie have things in common and they hate each other#Susie is mad that Terra will be closer to her father than she ever will#Terra just thinks she’s a bitch at first but things get personal when Shiver Star gets mechanized by HWC#in this universe Astrals (Terra Knights) species are formed by the dying wish of planets/stars#so when Shiver Star was destroyed a new astral was formed and taken into the ship#Susie wants to use the new puffball as research for her… upgrades#Terra Knight wants to take in and raise this baby he named Shiver#they take it up to the company president and upon hearing TK call Shiver a daughter he allows TK to be in charge of Shiver#Susie is pissed and tells Terra Knight that one day she will use him for her upgrades#that’s foreshadowing#when HWC invades Popstar and MK is captured she makes good on that threat and essentially betrays TK to get his… spare parts…#needless to say TK did not survive that#Shiver learned of this and escaped the ship to find refuge on Popstar#and when MK learns that part of his ‘upgrading’ process involved some Frankenstein with a astral he never met he feels extremely violated#eventually MK finds Shiver in the wilderness and eventually learns more of the knight who lives on inside him#the information leaves him extremely conflicted but he decides to begin to mentor Shiver to honor Terra Knight nonetheless
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fuck-customers · 3 months
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(half rant half story)
I'm a physicist. I work for a company that helps develop car parts. Essentially, car companies come to us with ideas on what they want from a part or material, and we make/test the idea or help them make/test it. Usually this means talking to other scientists and engineers and experts and it's all fine. Sometimes this means talking to businesspeople and board execs and I hate them
A bit ago when AI was really taking off in the zeitgeist I went to a meeting to talk about some tweaks Car Company A wanted to make to their hydraulics- specifically the master cylinder, but it doesn't super matter. I thought I'd be talking to their engineers - it ends up being just me, their head supervisor (who was not a scientist/engineer) and one of their executives from a different area (also not a scientist/engineer). I'm the only one in the room who actually knows how a car works, and also the lowest-level employee, and also aware that these people will give feedback to my boss based on how I 'represent the company ' whilst I'm here.
I start to explain my way through how I can make some of the changes they want - trying to do so in a way they'll understand - when Head Supervisor cuts me off and starts talking about AI. I'm like "oh well AI is often integrated into the software for a car but we're talking hardware right now, so that's not something we really ca-"
"Can you add artificial intelligence to the hydraulics?"
"..sorry, what was that?"
"Can you add AI to the hydraulics system?"
can i fucking what mate "Sir, I'm sorry, I'm a little confused - what do you mean by adding AI to the hydraulics?"
"I just thought this stuff could run smoother if you added AI to it. Most things do"
The part of the car that moves when you push the acceleration pedal is metal and liquid my dude what are you talking about "You want me to .add AI...to the pistons? To the master cylinder?"
"Yeah exactly, if you add AI to the bit that makes the pistons work, it should work better, right?"
IT'S METAL PIPES it's metal pipes it's metal pipes "Sir, there isn't any software in that part of the car"
"I know, but it's artificial intelligence, I'm sure there's a way to add it"
im exploding you with my mind you cannot seriously be asking me to add AI to a section of car that has as much fucking code attached to it as a SOCK what do you MEAN. The most complicated part of this thing is a SPRING you can't be serious
He was seriously asking. I've met my fair share of idiots but I was sure he wasn't genuinely seriously asking that I add AI directly to a piston system, but he was. And not even in the like "oh if we implement a way for AI to control that part" kind of way, he just vaguely thought that AI would "make it better" WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEANNNNN I HAD TO SPEND 20 MINUTES OF MY HARD EARNED LIFE EXPLAINING THAT NEITHER I NOR ANYONE ELSE CAN ADD AI TO A GOD DAMNED FUCKING PISTON. "CAN YOU ADD AI TO THE HYDRAULICS" NO BUT EVEN WITHOUT IT THAT METAL PIPE IS MORE INTELLIGENT THAN YOU
Posted by admin Rodney.
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eelhound · 8 months
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"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:
If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.
'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?
This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).
But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."
- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.
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emmafrostyyy · 5 months
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y'all sleeping on Astarion/Lae'zel bc this moment is so...the way the flippant demeanor drops and he doesn't hesitate to call her out for sticking with her version of Cazador like their relationship is so underrated fr...
sitting down writing this bullshit like let me peel it like an onion a bit and elaborate why this pairing is fascinating to me
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It's really interesting how during the most cathartic, life-altering moment in Astarion's questline, the reactions of the other companions are more about the moral wrongness/guilt of sacrificing innocent lives. Lae'zel doesn't do that and instead relates to his hurt.
She knows what's he's feeling, the lack of control, the unfairness of being powerless for too long. This is a woman who just found out her entire life purpose was built on lies, discarded and hunted by her own people after outliving her usefulness, and groomed to basically die for an insane power-hungry lich queen. She knows all too well that power isn't always real freedom. Her first instinct is to empathize with Astarion to steer him away from his hate and resentment.
Astarion/Lae'zel is so interesting to me because they're such a classic "can we make each other worse or make a better person out of the other?".
They both have genuine appreciation for violence and respect each other's ruthlessness. Astarion was used as a weapon of seduction while Lae'zel was of warfare. Sex with people is meaningless and not real intimacy for them, and while both have little understanding/experience of interpersonal relationships beyond the physical, they still feel and love very deeply. They have no frame of reference for things like friendship and warmth, but they badly want all of that and more, even if they don't know it yet.
In-game they can sleep with each other, which is basically the foundation of the normal Tav/Astarion romance. Lae'zel saw him during combat and got horny, who knows. Astarion who's used to luring people with his charms, takes up Lae'zel's blunt offer because she's a strong hardened warrior that can provide protection and be a worthy ally, and he doesn't know how to say no. Navigating the complications between one who wants to be seen beyond as a sex object, and one who comes from a totally alien culture with no concept of love/family/connections and only sex is honestly really compelling to me. It's a transactional, mutually beneficial thing with no emotional expectations. Once you get past the skeevy rockiness of their early relationship, I really like the idea of them slowly seeing something past the exterior and realizing they may have harshly misjudged the other, an unspoken friendship blooms, and in comes the realization that they are essentially loners longing for kindness and a comforting touch in the most desperate of situations.
Lae'zel is prideful, direct, has no sense of courtship talk, and doesn't hold back her thoughts the slightest--she's not sweet/agreeable and what you see is really what you get, which I imagine would be disarming for Astarion who's used to vacuous flattery and has difficulty trusting others. But she's also insanely protective, passionate, loyal, and an initiator-- every romance scene is triggered by her first and she's always showing effort towards her relationships, which would mesh well with Astarion who does need someone to nudge him.
She doesn't purposely suppress her feelings, she's just simply at loss at how to express them sometimes due to her wildly different upbringing. She stops the sparring match you agree to and an easy vulnerability slips instantly out of her: "I don't want to hurt you. I want to protect you, and for you to protect me." and "Thus far I've taunted you, devoured you, battled you. Now I want more than anything to soothe you." are romantic as fuck and Astarion of all people really needs to hear that tbh.
Astarion is also someone who struggles with reinforcing his boundaries, and a key theme in Lae'zel's romance is that she encourages and wants you to challenge her and learn to stand your ground. It's not gentlest method, but hey, relationships are about having to make an effort to learn each other's language.
I think he also would take pleasure "educating her on the matters of Fay-run" (I believe there's a whole banter with him teasing her and teaching her pet names) and would get a kick out of coaxing Lae'zel out of her shell with her shyness at showing public affection, and making her blush. Also it simply would be fucking funny to see Astarion who's used to easy seduction, trying to pass a persuasion check just to get a smooch and generally having to work to earn regular kisses from Lae'zel lmfaooo
Lae'zel also initially struggles to see her chains as chains. When she learns about Vlaakith's betrayal, she copes instantly through denial and shuts it down. Astarion is NOT having it and calls her out, he knows her well enough to recognize that she would value blunt honesty above all.
I imagine he also despises her lack of self-preservation, the way her entire identity is tied to duty and being in service of others, and doesn't understand her desire to still help/liberate the people that want her dead and are hunting her down. He wants to make this duty-bound soldier realize that looking out for herself, and putting herself first may not be the worst thing in the world.
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They're so similar to each other but are also polar opposites in some ways that make a more equal, balanced romance I think. It's not a simple, one-sided, feel-good "she/he can fix her/him" fantasy because both of them have to earn each other's love, actually cut through the other's flaws, and actively motivate each other to be better versions of themselves.
They're not at all the other's ideal guiding hand. It's rough, jagged, and imperfect, but that's how healing goes. It's so far from being the healthiest relationship -- but even if their belief systems differ, their moral compass does often align. I imagine it's a slight relief for them to have a partner where there would be less shame and judgment when they expectedly, occasionally slip up and fall into their bad habits.
Also, man, the "You showed me the betweens and beyonds. Beyond war and peace, beyond passion and obsession, most importantly, you showed me freedom.", "First you were my wound, now you were my cure.", "But you saw something else in me - someone else I could be. Someone who could break the cycle of power and terror that started centuries ago.." lines really hit hard when applied to them.
Of course, they can also make each other worse, feed into the other's negative traits that will bring out the worst part of themselves. It's this duality of their pairing that is very interesting to explore, the way it can steer in either direction because it's an intense, fraught relationship at its core.
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alicedrawslesmis · 2 months
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(sorry this is from a week ago but) Wait, what's going on right now that's complicated with Amazonian farmers' land rights?
Not farmers, indigenous people
See, recently they put a new law through congress that severely reduces indigenous land to the borders established during the late dictatorship, or immediately post-dictatorship, in 1988. An absolute joke of a border that was dreamed up by some military assholes. People in america may recognize this type of society from the times of westward expansion and think this is a thing of the past because for you guys it is. But here it is a reality. Murder is rampant. The reach of the law is incredibly limited. Government is just too weak and landowners basically run things. THAT'S WHY it's so important to donate directly to the native peoples instead of random NGOs because native people are fucking there and the more power they hold in the land the safer the land will be from agroindustrial expansion.
Well the law was vetoed by the the president and the Supremo Tribunal Federal, aka supreme federal court, labeled it as unconstitutional. Which it is, because our 1988 constitution describes native american land rights in some of its first articles. We thought this would be it for the law
But then the senate (that already overrepresents landowners in rural states) just went along and approved it anyway. I had no idea they could approve something unconstitutional. The progressives and particularly the socialists are fighting this in court. But it happens that for now the legal border is the severely reduced version.
Doesn't mean they'll just give up, because as it happens we don't have any stand your ground laws so even if you own a piece of land, you cannot legally speaking just shoot everyone there. Or attack or threaten them in any way. They'll just have long legal battles individually for the rights to occupy land based on use. Also the Xingu national park, the largest preserved land of the Amazon described as 'larger than Belgium', is being encroached by huge farms that are poisoning their water supply. The border is Visible. I'll try to find video of it but essentially you have a forest and a desert separated by a strict line.
Just last week in the south of Bahia (not the Amazon, let me explain more about the Amazon situation in a bit) Hãhãhãe leadership Nega Muniz Pataxó was shot and killed by an armed militia group that invaded and occupied the Caramuru territory.
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The situation in the Amazon, specifically the yanomami territory in Roraima our northernmost state, aka deep forest, is more dire than average given difficulty of access, sheer size, and government abandonment. It's a place that depends on government aid for medicine. It's land that is being systematically invaded by gold miners, pandemic, toxins from nearby farmlands, wood extraction etc. (wood extration is rampant everywhere tho). Early 2023 saw a massive federal government operation by now president Lula to empty the mines and try to look for where funding comes from. Yanomami land is still being invaded to this day, the struggle is ongoing.
The yanomamis need support right now more than any other. Last year saw a massive heat wave that (well, one, caused a girl named Ana Clara Machado to die during the Taylor Swift concert. This is unrelated but I feel like not enough foreign media covered this, Taylor even lied about it as well.) dried up a lot of rivers, killed a LOT of fresh water animals including an unprecedented amount of pink dolphins. Access that was already hard became damn near impossible without boats. I cannot overstate how many pink dolphins were found dead.
Another technique that landowners use to clear space for farms is to just set things on fire and then occupy the empty land, which they legally can do to land that was naturally burned in a forest fire. It happened that Pantanal, another national park of swampland, was massively devastated by fires last year too
this article is from 2020, the year that the worst fire happened, but in 2023 there was another one. It's been happening yearly now due to a) deliberate action and b) climate change aggravation.
And this is not nearly all. Just off the top of my head. If you speak portuguese I recommend following the APIB or the COIAB on instagram to keep up with the news. The FUNAI is the government branch of indigenous organization, but it's not generally that well liked. Still.
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tears-of-amber · 8 months
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Hearth & Home Witchcraft That I've Learned
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One of the biggest things that stands out to me when reading about hearth & home witchery is that everyday items are considered magical. Everyday moments, tasks, and chores as well. Its a beautiful way to live, if you really think about it. Big rituals are great, but as someone who is disabled, they rarely are doable. Here is a list of Hearth & Home Witchcraft Tips that i actually practice.
-Enchant a blanket by embroidering a sigil in the corner and using its color correspondences for your needs. It also helps me feel shielded from negative energy during meditation.
-Play music that makes you feel safe and AT HOME. This is almost like grounding, but also can be cleansing to the environment and especially the listeners. For me, its smooth jazz. The chill sound of the standup bass and the wandering piano notes that always seem to find their way to a comfortable key... its soothing to my soul.
-Talk to and about your home (kindly). So often its easy to complain about your living space. How you wish it looked or functioned differently. The house (in my belief) hears you. Treat it with kindness and gratitude for the shelter it provides. I say thank you to the house spirits and my home every morning.
-Find a convenient home protection ritual to do each month. I say convenient because if you overcomplicate things you'll feel less enthusiastic and less motivated to do it, and might even skip several months.
-Make a home cleansing spray using essential oils mixed with an appropriate amount of moon water. I like using a few drops of lemon, rosemary, lavender, and cinnamon. DO NOT spray this in the vicinity of your pets. I only use this spray in rooms where there arent any animals, to avoid complications with their health.
-Wash your bedding as often as you can and say a short incantation before you put it in the wash. It could go something like this. "I cleanse this bedding of all negative energy, from bad dreams, and from and all stress." Sleep is so important to your sense of safety and wellbeing at home.
-Open the damn windows when you can! Stagnant energy is known for dragging down people's moods. And there's nothing quite as uplifting as fresh air. This provides a healthy flow to your house's energy.
-Don't bring things in your home unless you want to incorporate their energy into your environment. This is something that's often overlooked. I especially advise heavy consideration when it comes to thrifting items and bringing them home. Try practicing sensing the energy of items so you can easily tell whats good to bring home and whats not. Thrifting is great! Im not discouraging it btw.
-Fresh flowers work miracles. Not only do they aesthetically brighten the room, but their correspondences and magical properties apply to the room that they're in. Sunflowers are a great example of a flower that encourages positivity, and are extremely affordable to get lots of them. Roses are a bit more expensive usually, but they invite that loving vibe. And African irises are great for psychic enhancement.
Thats all for this post! Reblog it if you found it helpful, or have any of your own cool practices for hearth & home witchcraft to share!
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thesmollestsnek · 10 months
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Death echoes
So a while ago, i found this dp x dc post that had a really interesting lore headcanon for Danny’s ghostly wail. Idk if I’ll be able to find it again, I’ll link it here if I do, but essentially it posited that every ghost has something called a “death echo”, which is an ability unique to them based heavily on their deaths. These echoes are the most powerful move in a ghost’s moveset, but they’re also extremely volatile and draining, typically damaging the ghost in some way when used, with Danny’s being his Wail because he died screaming. The original post then went on to some really cool halfa!Jason ideas based on these death echoes, but for this lil snippet with an extremely long intro I’d like to focus on Danny a bit more.
Edit: Apparently I may have extrapolated a lot of the actual lore behind these death echos myself? The inspiration post was a lot longer in my memories. Or I might've mushed multiple posts into one mental box and then forgot lol. So a lot of the actual detail from this point on is seemingly mostly original material? I think? Idk man, sometimes my brain spits out information without giving me any clues as to where it got that information. Anyway, this post got kinda long and since I'm... decently sure this is where I shifted from summarizing @ailithnight's post to writing all my own thoughts I figured here would be a good place to throw the cut lol.
So! with all of the context-for-the-context out of the way, let’s move on to the actual context for what I’m writing cause I can’t be bothered with writing an intro XD
Essentially, this is an au where Danny is an established member of the Justice League, or maybe one of the teen hero teams? I’m a slut for eternal teenager Danny, but maybe he’s enough of a powerhouse to be on the main team despite him both looking and acting like the dumbass fourteen year old he died as. Either way, he’s on a League/League-sanctioned mission and things go bad. Like, everyone-almost-dies bad. And so as a final desperation attack, Danny uses his Wail, a power he’s never told anyone on the league he even has. And it works, and they make it out, but after the fact everyone has. Questions. And because in this au death echoes are deeply personal, Danny dodges those questions, but the league coughbatmancough isn’t satisfied with that. So they push for answers. Answers Danny’s not willing to give, because. In my mind death echoes aren’t just based on how a person died, but also their experience of that death. What their last thoughts were. When Danny died the only thing that he could process beyond just an all-encompassing painpainpainpainpain was the sound of someone screaming. His screaming. And so his death echo is the sound of a fourteen year old child screaming in deathly pain and terror weaponized, which definitely gave the league Even More Questions than they would’ve had already. Which finally brings us to the actual snippet, which is a conversation between John Constantine, who was brought in for his experience with the supernatural once it became clear Danny wasn’t going to talk, and Danny himself. 
~~~~~~~
“So, kid. Batsy tells me you’ve been hiding some of your abilities, wanna tell me what's up with that? Call it an occultist's intuition, but somethin’ tells me you’re not just being stubborn for the hell of it.”
“It’s... complicated. And not anyone’s business, either!”
“Kid...”
“Why does it even matter?! It’s not something I want to or am even able to do on a regular basis! I saved the mission, can’t they just accept that and move on???”
Sighing, Constantine reached up to start massaging his brow. “Kid, you and I both know that ain’t gonna be enough. Now I know that some things are better left alone, but the rest of these idiots? They can’t accept that, Batsy especially. That man’s never left bloody well enough alone in his life”
He looked up just in time to see the otherworldly teen shrink into himself, looking every bit the child he was. “I know but... why? Why do they need to keep asking questions? And why do they only ask the ones that hurt to answer?”
A sharp glance. “The fuck kinda questions are they asking? Batman was speaking in more grunt than word, so I didn’t really catch all the details of what this power you’re supposedly hiding even is.”
Phantom shrinks even more into himself at that, and responds in a voice so small it’s more sigh than speech. “I... I can scream. And it breaks things and pushes people back. But it, it sounds. Bad. And it brings up bad memories and I don’t like to do it or listentoitoreventhinkaboutitandtheywon’tletmeforgetand-”
“Breathe kid. I know you don’t need to but just take a deep breath with me. Don’t you go getting lost in your own head on me now., Constantine reassured the kid automatically, the sheer hopelessness prompting action long before the words themselves could be understood. Then the rest of him caught up, and he had to pause. Looked up at the kid, saw just how distressed he was. A picture was starting to form in the back of his head, and Constantine didn’t like what he saw one bit. A last-resort power that the normally open Phantom was strangely reticent about. A scream so horrible sounding the rest of the league would not to stop asking questions about it. Terrible memories to match said scream. And one truly miserable child who couldn’t bear to even think about any of it. 
“Phantom... is that your Echo? Screaming?”
A miserable nod is his only response, the tears that had been welling up in the kid’s eyes finally starting to fall. Cursing softly to himself, Constantine stood to leave, bracing himself for the Bat’s inevitable questioning. “Well then you just take all the time you need love, and leave the rest to me. I’ll make sure the rest of those idiots know not to ask you about this ever again.”  And with that Constantine turned and strode towards the door, leaving the quietly sobbing child to collect himself in privacy.
~~~~~
I had a whole-ass lore dump conversation between Constantine and Batman planned here, explaining how death echoes are deeply personal, and asking about one is a taboo on par with, potentially even worse than, asking a ghost about their death outright. Because they are formed from an amalgamation of how a ghost died, their last thoughts, and their final emotions, in some ways asking a ghost about their Echo is like asking them to describe their death in painstaking detail. But uhhh... inspiration bug left. So yea. Side note, I’d like to apologize if my depiction of Constantine’s accent was Bad, I’m but a lowly USAmerican whose only exposure to British accents is through tv ^-^’
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staryukis · 4 months
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my first and last. . . ⇢ satoru gojo
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˗ˏˋsummary: satoru thinks he was always meant to meet you, but you entered his life at such a precarious time he often wonders if that’s the reason he clings to you the way he does 
˗ˏˋwc: 6.5k (🧍‍♀️ it got longer every time i edited it)
˗ˏˋcontains: gn!reader x gojo, angst (with a happy ending), very gojo centric it's essentially a character study, implied satosugu, mentions of canon character injuries/deaths, whatever the opposite of a meet-cute is, confessions, first kiss, hurt/comfort, gojo has a mild panic attack but i promise the description is suuper brief
˗ˏˋa/n: the stsg shipper in me jumped out a little bit with this one 🫣 we love our bi king gojo 🩷💜💙 i also wrote him to be neurodivergent coded in some parts out of pure self indulgence heh.. anyway happy birthday to our blue eyed princess <3
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since day one satoru’s life has been a series of puzzles and winding paths that he navigates with ease. donning the title of the strongest is no simple task, and it’s not unfounded at that. he’s simply always been the strongest, with never a moment of respite. but there was a time where he used to share that title — where he used to share the burden of the weight of the world on his shoulders.
his relationship with suguru geto was… complicated. he surely didn’t like him at first, finding the latter to be self-righteous to a fault. yet he stuck to his side, always in his general vicinity. but like a moth to a flame — he flew too close and he got burned.
you could attribute it to his low empathy, or a subtle inability to pick up on social cues… or maybe just the mere fact that he was 17 years old and a stubborn brat. but he can’t recall ever noticing when things started to go downhill. sure, he still knows when they did, knows all too well what the catalyst of this downwards spiral was — the hand that pulled the plug on the drain so that the water could spin around the stopper as it slipped underneath and down into the plumbing, completely out of his control.
but the more he thinks about it, the more slippery it gets. because even now, 10 years later, he can’t wrap his head around why he never noticed what suguru was going through. why he had so poorly assumed that the both of them being the strongest meant that suguru would be able to cope with everything in the same exact ways that he did. why he assumed it meant suguru was fine, even though he knew for a fact that he wasn’t — neither of them were.
but that was the nature of their relationship with each other. made complicated with silent agreements and conversations never had, words never spoken, and satoru often wonders — had he said something, had he swallowed his pride and just communicated with suguru… could things have been different?
surely not, right?
nevertheless, satoru never noticed until it was too late. or if he did, he thought nothing of it at the time. it was subtle things like wondering why suguru seemed thinner — have you lost weight, suguru? — or why the dark circles under his eyes got deeper as the seasons changed — suguru, did you stay up all night reading again? — or why the distinct amount of solo missions they were both sent on only drove the wedge between them further and further. but satoru was managing as best as he could, and he turned out just fine he thinks… so why didn’t suguru?
but really, try as he might, it was hopeless the very moment they got back from okinawa. the very moment he dropped his infinity after he’d been tiredly using his technique nonstop for days, allowing himself a mere second to let his guard down before the force of a katana had torn through his abdomen from behind him. the very moment that the same man who had stabbed him had killed him, and then killed the star plasma vessel they were supposed to protect, and then nearly killed suguru.
it was hopeless the very moment satoru came back from the dead, completely enlightened with a new sense of his techniques, a new perspective on his own life and his prowess. the very moment suguru stopped saying they were the strongest together, and started to just refer to satoru solely as thee strongest. full stop.
when you share the weight of the world with someone else, it suddenly feels a lot heavier when they decide to let it go without warning you in advance. but then again, the signs were always there — the sweat on his brows, wobbling knees threatening to buckle as he struggled to hold it up. satoru selfishly brushed aside the warning signs until suguru grew so tired, that even if satoru had tried a little harder to coax him back in, the fatigue in suguru’s muscles was too strong to even bother lifting anything back up onto his shoulders.
so all he could do was watch. watch as suguru turned around and left, disappearing into the crowd of people walking all around them. people who were probably having the most boring, average day of their lives. oh, how he so craved the mundanity, the simple things of a human life that were always too out of reach for a god.
his breaths were shallow and coming out in quick puffs, hands clenched tightly at his sides and twitching with the urge to use his technique, to take out suguru like he was supposed to. because that would have meaning. but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger on the first person he’d ever felt like he truly loved, in a sense. he allowed himself to hold someone so close to his heart because he thought he didn’t have to worry about him leaving… up until he actually did.
his heart was a jigsaw puzzle, and a piece of it went missing the day suguru left. what he hadn’t expected to happen next, was for you to enter his life with a piece of an entirely different puzzle, one that was still somehow a perfect fit.
not at first, at least.
“what the—“ the frustrated cry slipped past your lips, a groan of disdain when satoru had turned around to leave the scene of the worst day of his life, only to crash into you as you tried to maneuver around him, making you spill your drink all over your shirt. the drink itself was a frozen one, sweet like strawberry and sour like the green apple you mixed into it at the slushie machine from the gas station down the block. you’d have really enjoyed drinking the whole thing, had it not spilled all over you instead. “watch where you’re going, asshole!”
he blinked at you, dumbfounded and stammering as he tried to mumble an apology. but really, he wasn’t all that sorry. he was so numb to just about anything right now, he couldn’t find it in him to feel sympathy for a total stranger when his heart was just so broken the way it was.
you scoffed and looked up at him then, and your eyes widened a little in surprise when you met his. a pair of blue eyes, the brightest blue you’d ever seen, brighter than the sky on a clear and sunny day. eyes that held more in them than every ocean on the planet, with waves crashing around the irises and threatening to spill over his lash lines, glossing his eyes in a way that made him look ethereal. he was crying, but why did he look so, so…
“c’mon, let’s keep walking,” your friend’s voice cut through your thoughts, tugging lightly on your elbow as she shot a narrowed look at satoru before redirecting her attention back to you. “we’re gonna be late to catch the bus.”
you tore your gaze away from satoru, wordlessly moving past him as your friend dragged you along, walking in the same direction suguru had gone just minutes prior. satoru was still a little caught off guard, blinking rapidly before wiping his eyes with his sleeve and walking off.
it wasn’t the most ideal meeting, but on such an unforgettable day, it was burned into his memory nonetheless.
so when he saw you again a few weeks later, by yourself this time, sitting at the window of a crepe cafe he frequented, he felt his heart rate pick up a little bit. maybe it was just the reminder of the day suguru left him, or maybe it was the way the afternoon sun was shining across the window, casting a dispersion of colors from the spectrum of light onto your face. a bright white light shining through a glass prism and refracting, revealing a rainbow on the other side.
he lingered outside for a moment, clammy hands stuffed in his pockets as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his gaze flitting between the door to the cafe and the small table you were sat on. maybe he could just pretend you weren’t there at all, just walk in and order his usual and then leave, just like he’d intended. but the moment he stepped inside, the bell jingling above his head announcing his arrival, and you looked up at him, he cracked under the pressure. with a tightlipped expression he abruptly spun on his heel and left the shop, confusing yourself and other patrons alike.
he walked about 20 feet away from the shop before exhaling the breath he’d been holding. and then he thought, what the fuck am i doing? so he turned around once again, swallowing down his pride and the potential for humiliation as he stepped inside the cafe once more, this time avoiding your curious gaze entirely.
you thought you recognized him for a moment. there aren’t many lanky, freakishly tall boys with snowy white hair like his. what was throwing you in for a loop was the glasses he adorned — a black pair of lenses with round frames. when he walked in the sun you couldn’t make out his eyes behind them at all, it made you wonder if you could even see anything through them.
he stepped up to the counter and placed his order, and while he waited he couldn’t help it, he had to take a peek. it was this natural curiosity bubbling up in his chest, he just had to satiate it before it boiled over and got out of control. he turned his head a little to the side, subtly glancing over his shoulder at you seated in the corner. you were looking down at your hands, but the flush that reached your ears told him you’d almost been caught staring at him.
he pursed his lips in thought, humming to himself as he turned back around when they called his name at the counter. he wordlessly grabbed his crepe, nodding curtly at the worker before he started to walk back towards the entrance. but just before he walked through the door, something stopped him. like an invisible force field cast by the only person in the building that caught his attention, and from that point he felt drawn to you, all of a sudden. he chewed the inside of his cheek, turning and facing your general direction. you were caught this time — your head swiftly turned the other way, just barely making eye contact with him, but he’d already seen the way your hair moved when you turned your head. how it fell over your eyes for a moment, and how your hands twitched on the table with the urge to move it out of the way, only you tried to seem entirely nonchalant at the moment so you held back. how cute, he thought.
he lingered at the doorway, and then he took a step forward. and another. and then he was standing beside the small table, tilting his head curiously when you refused to acknowledge his existence. he seemed much taller up close, especially since you were sitting down. it was almost intimidating.
“yo,” he waved a hand in front of your face, beckoning your attention. you blinked in surprise, finally moving your own hand up to swipe the bangs out of your eyes as you looked at him. those pesky strands of hair that you hate. you’re trying to grow it out, so you can’t do much about it right now. “you were staring at me?” he says this like a question, like he doesn’t know how else to address the obvious elephant in the room between you two. you gulped then, looking around the room as you thought of an excuse, but you didn’t find one.
“i was.” you conceded, nodding a little awkwardly. he already caught you so there’s no point in lying, you think to yourself.
“…why?”
“your glasses.”
“what about my glasses?”
“they’re funny.”
he snorts, unsure if he was offended or amused. “what’s so funny about ‘em? they’re just glasses.”
you giggled then, a soft sound that trickled into his ears like sprinkles on a cupcake, colorful and of intrigue for satoru’s own sweet tooth. “i dunno, i just think it’s a little silly that you’re wearing sunglasses indoors.”
he hums, the corners of his lips almost threatening to curl up into a smile. almost. “i have sensitive eyes.”
“right,” you giggled again, a sound he was quickly learning tasted as sweet as the dessert in his hands. “can you even see anything through them when you’re standing inside? they look so dark.”
you’d be surprised what i can see, is what he almost replies with. but what leaves his mouth instead was uncharacteristic, if he’s being entirely honest with himself. “wanna see for yourself?”
you hesitated for a moment, but then nodded slowly. you were curious, after all. he put down the crepe in his hands, setting it down near your clasped hands on the table. he lifted his hands up to his frames, and for a moment he almost stopped himself. why am i doing this again? but he removed them anyway, extending his hands forward to hand them to you. your eyes followed the frames the whole time, reaching forward to grab them, your fingers brushing against his. but when you looked up at him again, you saw a familiar stark blue ocean in his eyes, and—
oh.
“you’re the guy who knocked over my slushie.” you stated bluntly, carefully starting to retract your hand again. satoru’s shoulders dropped a little bit, and he had half a mind to apologize, but he just extended his hand further and waved it in front of you, urging you to take the glasses and try them out. he’s not sure where this surge of insistence is coming from, but it seems to rub off on you, since you narrow your eyes a little curiously before gingerly accepting the lenses.
you bring them up to your eyes, holding them at a reasonable distance, and you’re surprised to see— well, nothing. just pitch black. you gape a little bit, muttering something under your breath. he almost expects you to freak out, maybe even awkwardly return his glasses and excuse yourself to leave the establishment. but you do none of that. you handed his glasses back with a snort of a laugh, a confused yet oddly amused grin crawling onto your face. “you must have really sensitive eyes, then. now i feel bad for calling you an asshole.” you mumbled, and he can’t stop the way his own smile mirrors yours. your reaction was even sweeter than he’d anticipated.
“it was an asshole move, to be fair.” he mutters a little quietly, putting the glasses back on his face and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. he picks up his crepe again, glancing at the door as he considers leaving. but then he looks back down at you and you have this look in your eyes that he can’t quite place. and suddenly he feels drawn to you again.
“maybe one of these days i could buy you another one to make up for it?”
that’s how it began. you entering his life and crawling inside of a hole in his heart right as it emptied out. a vacancy that was available against his own will, but you filled it out anyway. exchanging phone numbers and having short but meaningful conversations through the flip phone you despised texting on (it was 2007 after all, technology was not quite at it’s peak), but you put up with it anyway, because you found that talking to him quickly became a part of your day you looked forward to.
he thought the same of you, but it took him a while to admit that to himself. shoko had made a throwaway comment one day, saying he was just coping by befriending you as quickly as he did. she meant nothing bad of it, merely jesting, but it weighed heavy on his heart. he felt guilty, felt like he was replacing suguru somehow. no one could replace suguru, even if he doesn’t quite hold the same place in his heart anymore, he’d always be there.
suguru leaving was the first time satoru felt scared in his life. that’s a feeling one could only invoke in him after burrowing themselves so deep in his skin that the heartbreak of going separate ways tore him up from the inside out. that’s something he could never get over; he never will get over it.
but you, you were something else entirely. the feelings of guilt quickly changed into fluttery, warm feelings when he heard the ringtone he’d specifically set for you. it turned into rapidly beating hearts when you’d both met up after school, satoru going out of his way to walk down your route with you even though he lived on school grounds. it turned into waiting in anticipation whenever he sent you a text, biting his lip nervously as he stared at the tiny phone screen, somehow trying to will it to load your response faster. staying up at night talking over the phone, pacing around his dorm or looking out the balcony as he did, a huge grin on his face that he couldn’t wipe off for at least half an hour after you’d both gone to bed.
you never replaced suguru. but he often thinks to himself about it, pictures a life where fate was kinder to him. a world where he has both you and suguru around, at the same time. suguru would’ve loved you, he thinks. the two most important people in his life, a consistent reminder that it’s okay to love and be loved back. a warm spring after a harsh, bitter winter.
a year or two goes by, you both graduate high school, and to him your life seems so… normal, while his life is anything but. for a while he doesn’t tell you, doesn’t tell you about his job as a jujutsu sorcerer. a title he was born into, as a user of both limitless and six eyes — a combination the likes of which the Gojo clan hasn’t seen for hundreds of years. a ticking time bomb.
it was innate for him, embedded in his dna. his fate was sealed the moment he opened his eyes. he had no choice at all in how he got to live his life, it was all outlined for him the moment he was born. december 7th, 1989 — a momentous day for the jujutsu world and the world of curses. he was standing for something before he even learned how to walk.
what he did have a say in was your involvement in it. he always thought the lesser you knew the better, so he kept it to himself. when he got busier you would ask more questions, trying to figure out what kind of job he had, but he never answered them honestly. it drove you both apart a little for a few years, and it broke his heart, but he thought it was better this way. it was easier to keep you out of the hot mess that was his world as the jujutsu sorcerer gojo, safer to keep you at arms length so that your precious life didn’t get tangled in the ugliest parts of his.
and yet he also wanted nothing more than to hold you closer, to nestle you in the cavity of his heart and never let go of you. because to you, he wasn’t the strongest jujutsu sorcerer — the six eyes and limitless user with the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. to you, he was just… satoru.
but he couldn’t hold you closer to his heart without risking the semblance of normalcy in your life, one that was so fragile, he would never forgive himself if it shattered. if the glass shards cut into the palms of his hands, his own blood slipping through his fingers while he desperately tried to piece it back together.
worst of all, he thinks you would never forgive him, for some reason. he can’t explain why he thinks this. it’s all an emotional and irrational mess in his brain that he would rather ignore instead of trying to untangle the cords.
maybe it’s the 17 year old in him, the one that lost his best friend — his one and only — in the very same world he wants to keep you out of.
suguru geto was the first person he ever cared so deeply about, and the first person who left him. you’re the only other person he’s cared for so much since then, and right now you’re the last person he wants to lose. his first and last, representing completely different parts of satoru’s soul that he clings to like a lifeline. if he lost you too he’d be inconsolable.
and that thought was what drove him to his limit when suguru died. you’re taken by complete surprise when you hear a frantic banging on your door. it’s the night of december 24th, you were just about ready to go to bed early in preparation for christmas the next morning when you opened the door to see satoru, completely disheveled and in a cold sweat. he was always careful about the parts of himself that he showed you, always made sure he didn’t worry you too much by being so emotionally vulnerable around you. but right now, after the night he just had, he can’t do it anymore. he can’t always be the strongest.
“can we talk?” he had asked you the moment he met your eyes. he was breathless, overwrought — at his wit’s end. you’ve never seen him like this — at least, not since that fated day in september 2007 when you both first met.
when you invited him in he stumbled past you, his breathing erratic and his usual bright blue eyes were currently a dull gray, they were almost lifeless. the light he often held in them was dimming with the weight of his emotions and he needs to say something to you, he needs you. he can’t keep himself together anymore.
“satoru, come,” you gently grabbed his elbow, a touch unobstructed by his infinity that he so desperately craved. “sit, and take deep breaths for me, okay?”
he wasn’t aware that his hands were trembling until you grabbed them, and he squeezed your hands so tightly it almost hurt. the moment you sat down next to him on the couch he dipped his head forward and dropped it on your shoulder, burying his face in the crook of your neck and closing his eyes, his lips pressed together in a thin line as he tried not to sob. a man so much bigger than you — in height namely — was shrinking into your side and you hadn’t the slightest idea what could have possibly brought him down like this.
“what’s wrong, hun?” you asked him sweetly, and your voice was so soothing to his soul he just couldn’t take it anymore. he whimpered weakly, his lips trembling as he pulled his head back to look in your eyes.
“i’ve been lying to you.” he blurts out, making your eyes widen in surprise. “i- i know it sounds bad, fuck— you don’t even know what it is i’m going to say to you, you have no idea how badly—“ he cuts himself off when his voice cracks, clamping his mouth shut and swallowing the lump in his throat before continuing. “just… just promise me. promise me you won’t freak out. just let me say everything i need to say first and then you can react, but please— please understand why i did this.”
you’re not sure how to respond to this at first, his words are loaded with something you don’t recognize. and there’s this perceptible fear in his eyes that concerns you more than anything else. you inhale deeply for a moment, studying the trembling in his expression, and then you nodded slowly. you’re not sure why, but you trust him. “okay… i promise.”
and so it goes. he unloads everything — the world of jujutsu and curses, his upbringing, his one and only. he tells you about his teenage years, his near death experience (or well, more like an actual death experience, but he holds back on those specific details for now — figures he doesn’t need to tell you just yet how reverse cursed techniques work when you’re already getting an information overload), how he lost suguru. he tells you about suguru’s cult, the war suguru declared on jujutsu society, on him. he tells you about his students and how he fought to protect them, tells you about the night parade of a 100 demons, and finally, finally — he tells you how he had to ultimately kill his best friend. just hours prior to seeing you.
“…wow.” was all you had to respond with. what else could you even say in that moment?
it takes a good 15 minutes afterwards for the air between you both to settle again. for satoru to feel like he can look you in the eyes and not get these intense pangs in his chest that make him feel like you’re pulling away from him. takes him 15 minutes to grab your hands again, all with an intense urge to hold them close to his chest so you could just feel how hard his heart beats for you.
“so… all this time…?” you trailed off. you’re not really sure what you’re asking him, but somehow he knows. he’s learned to read you so well over the years, so many unspoken words from you where he’s filled in the blanks, like a crossword puzzle. sure, it makes him come off presumptuous, often even feeling like he’s putting words in your mouth before you’ve even opened it. but he’s never been wrong, either.
he knows you like you know your favorite book — you could recite the first few pages with your eyes closed. and you thought you knew him, too… you still do, just not as well as you’d thought after a decade of friendship.
he can practically see this thought process playing out in your head, kind of like a tape reel displayed through a projector. he sees it in your eyes, in the way your expression falls a little bit, brows furrowing with the realization that you’ve never truly known him. and he feels like that desperate 17 year old all over again, watching his best friend turn his back to him and feeling completely helpless to it.
“i- i know it’s a lot to take in, but please don’t feel like-…” he cuts himself off, chewing his lower lip nervously as he searches your expression. “i’m still the same person you’ve known all these years. the parts of me that i did show you are still real… i’m still satoru.” i’m still your satoru, is what he actually wants to say, but he’s not sure if he should. he feels like he’s in murky waters right now, and even with his six eyes he can’t see the bottom.
if it’s one thing he’s learned it’s that trying to use his techniques to understand you is like a child trying to shove a square block toy into a triangle shaped hole. what you experience in your life just can’t be explained with cursed energy, or years worth of knowledge as a jujutsu sorcerer. when he’s with you it’s the closest he’ll ever feel to being human.
you lifted your eyes to meet his own, that dimmed blue color that was shining with a layer of tears he struggled to fight back. the sight made you frown, your thumbs running over his knuckles in a way that made his shoulders relax a little bit. “i know, i just…” you chewed on your lower lip, trying to put your thoughts into words. “you know i can take care of myself, right? why didn’t you just tell me sooner.”
he’d expected that response from you, if he was being honest with himself.
“it’s not that i think you can’t take care of yourself,” he started, his voice soft and wavering with the fragility he felt in his heart. “it’s that you— you just…” he sighed, closing his eyes for a moment and inhaling sharply. he opened his eyes again after a short moment, his gaze firmly holding yours now.
he looks at your life and he sees something so beautiful. he sees normalcy and appreciation for the mundane aspects of living — like stopping to smell flowers while on a walk, or petrichor in the morning. bees buzzing about and birds chipping at the crack of dawn. all things he never had the time for; a man who was given his life on a silver platter when he was born doesn’t have everything he actually wants.
so he tells you this. he tells you how important you are, how important it is to him that you stay the way you are.
“…i would never forgive myself if i ruined any of that.” he concludes, his hands still tightly grasping yours in an attempt to keep himself grounded.
you took another deep breath, and this time you saw something new in his eyes. it felt familiar, a splash of something he always feels when he’s around you. it made your heart flutter, as if your soul recognized it for what it was before your mind even registered it happening.
you brought your hand up, letting go of one of his to cup his cheek, and the way he leaned into your touch without hesitation made you want to close your eyes and savor the warmth he radiated. with snowy white hair and icy blue eyes on pale skin, it’s almost as if one would expect his body to run a lot colder than it actually did. it was always a pleasant surprise when this assumption was proven wrong.
the truth of the matter was that he held the warmth of the sun in his heart, shining so brightly just for you.
“you said you’re the strongest, yeah?” you murmured after an extended moment of silence, and his eyes fluttered briefly as he nodded his head. “so… why are you worried you’ll ruin it? you could never ruin anything for me.”
he wants to dispute that on pure instinct — he has ruined something before. he’s ruined someone before. and carrying the weight of that guilt in his heart does not ease his nerves right now, because what’s to say it wouldn’t happen again?
but the sincereness in your voice, the simplicity in your answer. the way you look at him as you caress his cheek. he can see you firmly believe this to be true, that he could never ruin anything for you. and for once, he just wants to allow himself to be vulnerable. you know he’s the strongest now, but that doesn’t change anything between you both because he’s never really had to be the strongest when he’s around you.
the thought then crosses his head. it's a unique feeling, one that could only parallel how he felt about suguru, but it's not quite the same either. it's special for you.
“i care so deeply about you… i think i always will.”
the words leave his mouth before he can stop them, but it’s not like he would’ve tried to. he’s already poured so much of his heart to you tonight, what’s a little more from the jar in his hands? the one he so carefully passes on to you for you to hold and keep safe; a glass jar tinted with the colors of his emotions, swirls of pinks and purples and blues like the evening sky outside the window.
and you, naturally, reciprocate. handing him your own glass jar, one that’s much smaller than his but open and willing to be filled with all the extra love he harbors. when his hands find your cheeks, he feels the warmth in them; or maybe it’s the warmth from his own palms. but it doesn’t stop him from pulling you close, shrinking the gap between you two until your lips meet in a slow and tender kiss.
the first he shares with you, and one that hopefully won’t be the last.
you pull away after a moment, and he has to fight the urge to chase your lips with his. when he opens his eyes he sees yours are still closed, and he almost panics until his gaze lands on the prominent blush on your cheeks. it reached the very tips of your ears, and he was convinced he must’ve looked equally as flushed if the way his heart clenched in his chest told him anything.
when you didn’t open your eyes one of his hands slid off your cheek, his index finger gently tracing the shape of your face, all the way up to your forehead. you’d grown out your bangs by now, a process he’d witnessed over the years. how you always fought the urge to cut them when they were just long enough to go over your eyes but too short to tuck behind your ears. it was easier to brush to the side now, so he did that, his finger trailing over the arch of your brow before he carded his fingers into your hair. he brushed it back a little bit, a smile slowly creeping onto his face when your eyes fluttered open with the action.
“satoru?”
“hmm?” he hummed, unable to stop his smile from growing when your hand went up to his, placing your palm on top of his hand and holding it against your cheek.
“you’re not just doing this because you feel like you have to, are you?” you murmured, the question making him stop running his hands through your hair as he stared at you intently, his hand sliding down to your shoulder now. “i don’t— i don’t want this… us… to only be something done out of convenience for you.”
he hesitates in his answer, not because you were right, but because he was worried that you are. you entered his life at such a precarious time, it’s easy to assume he clings to you because of that. a decade and more could never undo the damage left in his soul by suguru geto, but holding you — feeling the warmth of your lips on his. he thinks it might be the closest he’s ever felt to mending his heart.
“no, it’s… it’s not…” he mumbles after a moment, shaking his head slowly. it’s a short response, but there’s a battle waging behind his eyes when he says it. he grips your shoulder a little tighter, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath — he reminds himself that you’re still here. reminds himself that you care about him, as he does you.
and he can’t think of anything that feels more right to him that that.
“it’s not.” he repeats again when he opens his eyes, his tone firmer now. “what i… what i feel for you…” he swallows nervously. exposing your raw feelings is hard, talking about your emotions is hard. but if there’s anything he’s learned it’s that simply communicating with the people he cares about will take him a long way. he still needs some practice cementing that habit. “what i feel for you is real. it has been for a long time. it’s more than i’ve ever felt for anyone before, maybe even more than…” he trails off again, but this time he doesn’t need to finish his statement. you know exactly who he’s talking about now.
you nodded slowly, your eyes carefully searching his as he spoke. you mulled over his words, tossing and turning them in your head before you formulated your response. but then the corners of your lips twitched upwards, the slightest bit, and you couldn’t to stop the quiet giggle that left your lips first. his favorite sound. “okay…” you murmured softly, inhaling deeply before nodding your head a second time. “okay, yeah, i… i believe you… i feel the same way, then.”
his smile grew wider than ever and he stroked your cheek with his thumb, his eyes scanning your face before landing on your lips again, and then, “can i… kiss you again?” it was cute to you how nervous he looked, his lower lip sucked in between his teeth as he chewed on it. when you nodded your head he had the urge to throw himself at you with the sudden surge of joy that erupted in his chest, but he wasn’t trying to seem too eager right now — he didn’t want to overwhelm you, after all.
(you sensed he was eager regardless; you never told him this but when he gets really excited his eyes shine just a little bit brighter than normal, a phenomenon you always found strange but never questioned. and right now, they were pretty much glowing. but now that you know about his… powers, were they? ‘techniques’? you could probably reason it to that; you’ll ask him about it one of these days.)
he leaned in again to meet your lips with his, and the small squeak that left your mouth when his hands cupped your face again made him chuckle heartily against your lips. no, really — he was giggling now, pecking your lips repeatedly until you were giggling, too. he was so incredibly happy in this moment.
there’s still a lot that he has to deal with in an emotional sense. he’s mourning the death of his best friend, someone he hasn’t truly known for 10 years but it doesn’t make the current loss any easier. suguru had been gone for a decade already, but now he was actually gone.
ironically, however, that loss was met with a gain. twice, now. when suguru left he met you, and when suguru died it opened the doors satoru kept locked in his heart and allowed you to settle in there. maybe it is convenience, but you being there for him in both scenarios has to mean something.
in a way, it’s as if the universe was trying to tell him that he was never meant to be alone. when you’re the strongest it’s easy to feel lonely, but at the end of the day satoru isn’t a god. of all the people he’s known in his life, suguru was the first person to introduce this idea into his head — this idea of his existing humanity. but you were the one to really cement it into his very being, tying it off with a bow and tucking it into the cavity of his heart that suguru left behind. a weight that keeps his feet planted firmly on the ground, keeps him from floating away into the heavens. it keeps him down on earth, with you at his side.
there’s a first for everything, he thinks. but now that he has you, he hopes that the pain he experienced because of suguru is the last he’ll ever have to endure. he’ll treasure you for the rest of his life, however long he has left of it.
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not-quite-normal · 10 months
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Congrats on launching one of my favorite movies ever made! On my third rewatch, I paid really close attention to eye shapes and noticed Miguel’s eyes are ridiculously expressive considering how different his mask is from the traditional spider mask, essentially missing one whole side of the lens and having a lot more geometry to move around. How difficult/easy was it to get his eyes to emote as much as the other spidey’s masks? Or was it relatively simple and just looks complicated on the outside?
well observed! his mask eyes did have to have a different rig from the other spidey's eyes but was actually relatively simple to control. the hard part was designing the shapes!
the default spiderman eyes on peter and miles have an extra outline around the white eye shields, which requires more attention to make sure the lines look nicely weighted
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for eyes like miles, we have separate controls around the white and red bits to adjust the lines/shapes of them individually so that the red line goes from thin near the middle of the face, to thick, and then ends in a point at the top (the blue line in the middle just stays in the middle wherever it is).
but miguel only had one piece of geo to worry about! we had small "per edge" controls to adjust the shape vertex by vertex lol, and then larger controls to adjust the movement/expressions
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we had to be very designy with how the eyes emoted because of how complex the overall eye shape is, we couldn't simply scale them down for a squint. it required a lot of thought behind how the shapes should change based on what we needed the expression to be, while still keeping him on model
huge shoutout to our senior animation supervisor humberto rosa, who was instrumental in the animation design on this movie and hammering these rules into the whole animation crew to make sure all the characters stayed on model. i learned so much from him on how to make 3D characters look like 2D drawings
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dollfaceksj · 6 months
Text
the pink pill | myg version (m) — “no one else”
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➥ banner by @jkndigo.
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➥ PAIRING: yoongi x fem!reader
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➥ SUMMARY: In each of these universes, you find yourself consuming what is known as the pink pill. This pill is essentially a drug that enhances your libido to the max and you’ll quite literally never experience arousal like you do when you’ve taken this pill. Thankfully, in each universe, there’s a man that’s ready to help you explore and reach your peak of sexual euphoria.
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➥ GENRE: smut ⋆ porn with plot ⋆ exes
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➥ CATEGORY: one-shot [part of the pink pill series]
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➥ WARNINGS: explicit sexual content, angst, exes but also idiots, degradation kink, unprotected sex (dont be like them), rough sex but also love-making??, did i mention a bit of angst, multiple positions guys yoongi is catching up for missing u all those times likeee, spankingggg, making out w tongue, overstimulation, claiming/possessiveness, multiple orgasms for reader, extremelyhorny!reader, cocky exboyfriend!yoongi…. yeah., hes a sick son of a bitch but thats why we like him besides he’s pretty tame in this i have worse yoongi’s up my sleeve this is nothin, neither of you have moved on, mutual pining but mutual STUBBORNNESSSSS for fucks sake, filthy words, creampie, oral sex (f. rec), embarrassingly quick climaxes likeee, minors DNI
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➥ WORDCOUNT: 9.8k
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a/n: and at last, yoongi’s ver of the pink pill is finally out!!! thank you for loving jk’s version! i hope you enjoy yoongi’s. beware of a bit of angst and complicated feelings<33
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⋆ TAGLIST ⋆
⋆ MASTERLIST & CONCEPT VIDEO ⋆
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Your trembling thumb hovers over the blue arrow next to your unsent message, eyes scanning over the message over and over again. Your heart might implode in your chest the moment you hit send, which is why you’ve been staring at the message that would cause more cons than pros for the past 5 minutes.
Well, would it, though? It’s just a favor. You need a favor.
It’s like your brain is talking directly to your heart. Your brain is telling you how bad of an idea this is whilst your heart is just rolling its non-existent eyes at the nagging, as if your heart isn’t about to slide up your airways into your esophagus, travel straight up your burning throat and launch out of your mouth. You need to calm down.
The aggravating lump in your throat doesn’t let up.
And that’s when the pad of your thumb impulsively hits the damn blue arrow that’s been mockingly staring at you for the past few minutes.
[11:12PM]
from: You
to: Ignore
can you come over
Once the small letters that say ‘delivered’ pop up under your blue message, you internally scream into the void. Your eyes stay glued to your phone, the back of your phone is becoming slimy in your grasp due to the sweat your palms are rapidly producing.
You barely blink as you stare at the screen, your lips twitching as you wait and attempt to ignore the anxiety bubbling in your chest.
Your gaze slowly shifts upwards on the conversation, rereading old messages. The last you heard from him was 4 months ago. The two of you broke up around 9 months ago but still slept together for a good 2-3 months after.
The last message between you two from 4 months ago was you asking him when he could come pick up the rest of his shit. He came, picked up his shit and that’s when you last saw him. You barely exchanged any words. You had anticipated having sex one last time but he just wordlessly collected his stuff and left.
So, it’s understandable why you’d be so worried about asking him to come over and… well, ask him if he can fuck the shit out of you.
Your heart plummets into the pit of the earth when you notice the ‘delivered’ has turned into ‘read 11:13PM’.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
He’s not responding.
Why is he not responding?
One minute passes. Two minutes pass. Three minutes. Four.
You’ve been staring at your phone the entire time and not once did the bubble that indicates he’s typing pop up.
What if he doesn’t even want to talk to you?
Fuck.
What the fuck were you even thinking?
⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆
After cleaning up the coffee table that was covered in snacks and empty cans that you used to take your mind off the excruciating arousal pooling in your core, you start heading into your once-shared bedroom with your head held down. It’s been 12 minutes since you sent that message and you haven’t gotten a response.
You’re a damn loser.
You plan to start slipping out of your plain shirt and shorts, cringing when you realize you’ve completely soaked through your cotton shorts. How fucking embarrassing. What the hell is in that pill?
Right as your fingers tuck under the hem of your shorts to pull them down your legs, you hear a rhythmic knock on your front door.
What? Who could…
Wait.
It possibly couldn’t be.
The lump returns to your throat at lightning speed as you start heading down your corridor, sluggishly dragging your feet across the floor.
You press your hand flat against the door in an attempt to gather your thoughts and collect your breath before you slowly start opening up, his familiar feline eyes staring at you with an agitated look pooling in them.
“What do you want?” He doesn’t even have the decency to greet you, he just stands there with his hands shoved into the pockets of his sweatpants.
You quietly swallow as you cross your arms over your chest, stepping to the side to wordlessly invite him in. When he gives you a raised eyebrow in confusion, you say, “I don’t need my neighbors hearing my business.”
The exasperated sigh he lets out slightly stings but he walks in nonetheless. You close the door behind him but he’s showing no intentions or moves to take his shoes off. He just stands in front of the door, annoyance draped over his features.
You silently stare up at him, hoping he doesn’t notice your strange demeanor.
“So? Are you gonna tell me what you want or are you just gonna stare at me and continue to waste my time?” His words are blunt and brutal—the bitterness that he still holds in his heart for you hasn’t left him, it seems.
You finally find the courage to speak up and quietly say, “I need a favor, Yoongi.”
He blankly stares at you for a few moments. Humorlessly laughs at your request. Drops his head. Shakes it from side to side in disbelief.
You can’t help but glare at his reaction, fighting the urge to roll your eyes and spew insulting words at him. This is kind of selfish of you.
“Why would I do you a favor?” he asks once he’s stopped laughing, staring you down with hooded eyelids and no traces of mock amusement left on his face.
“I’ll owe you,” you say, failing to hide the clear annoyance in your tone. You want to strangle him.
“You already owe me.” His response is almost immediate, leaving you speechless for a few seconds as you stare up at him with a frown etched onto your brows.
“Excuse me? What the fuck do I owe you?”
He tilts his head to the side with an irritated look on his face before he says, “I don’t know, you wasted 3 years of my fucking life?”
You exaggeratedly roll your eyes at his words, shaking your head in exasperation. “I could quite literally say the same to you.”
He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, his intense stare down never letting up.
He decides to ignore your remark and repeats, “What do you want, Y/N?”
You swallow again, looking to the side to avoid his penetrating gaze as you think about how the fuck you’re going to ask him what you want to ask him.
How do you even begin to ask?
Hey, you haven’t heard from me in months but could you fuck me real quick?
“What? Do you need money?” he asks in a neutral tone, although you can sense the concern tinged in his words.
“No,” you mumble, the collar of your shirt is starting to feel like it’s closing in around the perimeter of your neck with the goal of suffocating you.
He continues, “Then what? An alibi?”
You throw your head back in exasperation as you groan, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
It’s quiet for a moment and it makes you look at him. You notice he’s staring straight at you like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on and what you aren’t telling him.
“Need some lovin’?” he asks with a certain humorous tone, the joke causing you to glance up at him through your lashes with big eyes.
It seems like only then that he takes notice of your swollen lips, your dilated pupils, the thin layer of sweat on your forehead and the quickened breathing with the way his eyes scan your entire face and the frown on his brows slowly disappearing when the realization dawns on him.
He narrows his eyes at you and his hands leave his pockets, swiftly moving to cross over his chest as his lips twitch, something you can only describe as him trying to stifle a smirk. “You actually asked me to come over so I could come fuck you?”
Your mind travels at incomprehensible speed to come up with an answer, leaving you scrambled and almost stuttering. You blurt out, “It’s your fault.”
This makes his brows pinch together in utter confusion. “How the hell is it my fault?”
A deep sigh pushes past your lips as you drop your arms from your chest, hands resting on your hips as you look at the floor in shame. “I was cleaning shit up and I came across that dumb pink pill you bought that you wanted me to try but never got the chance to,” you explain, peeking up at him through your lashes momentarily before averting your gaze again.
“Pill? What pink pill?” he repeats, the frown on his face deepening further as the word leaves his mouth.
“Yes, that stupid pink pussycat pill, Yoongi. We bought it as a joke to try on our anniversary but then we had that stupid fight.” You try to get him to recall the events of a year ago, the quick wince on his face at the mention of your anniversary fight doesn’t go unnoticed by you. “Anyway, I didn’t want it to go to waste and I was wondering what it might feel like or if it even works. So, I took it earlier today, for shits and giggles.”
He slowly nods to your words as the memories come back to him, seemingly remembering how excited he was for you to take that pill. “So, I reckon the pill is doing what it said it would?”
You merely grunt in response.
He’s silent for a few seconds before quietly chuckling, shaking his head. His chuckle is so deep and sultry, it shoots a tingle right down your soaked panties.
You huff, “What’s so amusing, you dickhead?”
He glances at you through his brows for a moment before averting his gaze, his eyes roaming his surroundings as he looks around your once-shared home. “I’m just flattered, is all.”
“Flattered?” you repeat, a disapproving frown on your features. He’s turning this entire thing into a compliment for himself.
You really can’t fucking stand him.
“You could’ve flaunted that pretty face out at some bar and gotten someone to fuck you without needing to offer any favors,” he explains, giving you a glimpse of his thought process, those words making your body heat up all over again.
Damn him.
You know Yoongi has always found you insanely attractive but him so nonchalantly reminding you has set your insides aflame.
“You know I don’t do that stuff,” you mumble with a shake to your head.
His bitter, humorless chuckle booms in your ears. Why does it sound like he’s literally inside your head? “That’s exactly how we met, you dirty liar.” He reminds you of how his hips were slamming into yours an hour after you met him and no rebuttal comes to your mind.
You silently stare at him, bringing your hand up to wipe some of the sweat off your hairline with the back of your index finger.
“Yeah, you know what? I don’t know why I even texted you. You can leave,” you say, a surge of anger coursing through your veins as you reach for the door handle but Yoongi is quicker than you.
His hand quickly reaches for yours, fingers wrapping tightly around your wrist. “I can tell you why you did,” he quips, cockily.
You glare up at him but make no effort to remove his hand from your skin, the single touch of his skin against yours sends lava down all your veins and every single one of your nerve-endings. Fuck, you wish you could pounce him right fucking now. You finally gather your thoughts and say, “Oh, please, do enlighten me.”
“You asked me here because you don’t want all that arousal to go to waste on someone that doesn’t know your body like I do.” He starts closing the gap between you two, face closing in on yours. “They won’t do the things you like.”
Your throat tightens at his proximity and his words, your lungs seconds away from imploding in between your ribcage.
“And you’re too shy to tell them because you know you like filthy things.” He moves his other hand up to trace the shell of your ear with the tip of his index finger, his eyes glued to how his finger glides down your skin.
If he noticed his touch instantly awoke the goosebumps on your skin, he doesn’t comment on it and continues to play with your ear, fingers coming down to rub your earlobe in between the pads of his thumb and index finger.
“No one knows your body like I do, no one else.” He drops his hand from your ear to trace the collar of your shirt, the tip of his finger occasionally grazing your neck. “No one knows how filthy you are. How needy you are. How you like to be touched and kissed. That’s how I know,” he concludes.
He adds, “You clearly haven’t moved on.”
He was doing so well, too.
Haven’t moved on? Son of a bitch.
“Yeah, well, what about you?” you blurt out. You watch as his thick eyebrows scrunch together in smug mockery.
“What about me? Don’t turn this on me, sweetheart. You’re the one asking me to come fuck you.” He starts to take off his shoes, kicking them aside like he used to do.
Cocky asshole.
“You showed up 10 minutes after a simple ‘come over’ text, no questions asked.” You remind him of tonight’s events and his face slowly turns into a scowl, his usual quick witty comebacks suddenly nonexistent.
“So what?” he mumbles, not in the mood to fight you for this any longer because he knows he’ll lose.
“Just admit you want this as bad as I do instead of being smart about it,” you say, rolling your eyes as you take a step back to create some more distance between you two. You hadn’t realized he’d gotten that close.
He shrugs his shoulders with an air of nonchalance, rolling his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “I wouldn’t say as bad as you.”
Right, because you took that pill and your arousal is off the charts.
He must think he’s sooooooo funny.
“You’re a lia–”
Before you can even finish speaking, he takes a step closer and it inevitably traps you in between his body and the wall behind you. He arrogantly adds, “Want me to push my fingers into your panties and check?”
Fuck.
He shouldn’t still have the ability to knock the oxygen right out of your lungs with just silly words. He shouldn’t.
You stare up at him with a furrow in your brows, eyes wide and lips almost quivering, simply at the thought of him touching you. Damn him.
And he knows.
Because his gaze drops to your lips before back to your eyes, the corners of his own lips curling up at something he’s thinking about.
“What?” you grumble, your voice barely coming out and leaving you for dead in your time of need.
“Nothing.” He shakes his head and adds a shrug to his shoulders for extra nonchalance. “I just think after you ran your mouth like this, it’d be more fun to make you beg for it.”
Your hands come up to his chest, pressing flat against him to push him back but he doesn’t budge an inch because there’s no real strength behind the push and he knows it.
“I hate you,” you quietly say, hands still pressed up against his chest with the tiniest bit of pressure to make it seem like you don’t want him.
Unfortunately, Yoongi knows you too well.
“That’s fine, as long as you’re good to me.” The words leave his mouth in a breathy chuckle that drapes over your lips as his face closes in on yours, plump lips grazing the skin of your jaw. “You were always so good to me.”
“Why did you leave me, then?” Your voice comes out a bit choked, a big gulp following your question and it’s almost like you’re attempting to swallow the words back down. You can’t believe you just blurted that out. Is one of the side effects of that dumb pink pill being emotional as hell?
He freezes for a few seconds before pulling away and searching for your eyes. His expression is decorated by a frown and his pretty lips are pressed into a thin line.
He doesn’t say anything for a while, just lets the deafening silence settle around you. Stares at you as if one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries is being revealed to him and the answer is in your irises. Watches as you idly blink at him and it makes his lips twitch. Seems to be in deep thought and you can’t figure out what’s going through his mind for the life of you.
Then, he speaks.
“Why didn’t you stop me?”
His words paired with his intense gaze sends a jolt of electricity down your spine, leaving your legs to wobble like they’re made of jelly.
You both stare at each other for a while in complete silence. His familiar, black, feline eyes staring into yours so intimately summon a vine that wraps around your heart, digging its sharp thorns into your most beloved organ until it bleeds out all over your insides.
He’s right.
You clearly haven’t moved on.
“Let’s just,” you pause and shake your head free of those thoughts. You don’t bother to finish your sentence as you wrap your fingers around his wrist, leading him toward your once-shared bedroom and he simply lets you.
As soon as you walk in, you let go of his hand and reach for the hem of your shirt. You yank it off your body without a second of hesitation before tossing it somewhere on the floor and it makes him chuckle for some reason.
You turn to glare at him. “Something funny?” you snark, arms crossing over your chest like a child that wanted the purple lollipop instead of the yellow one.
He stares at you from the entrance of your room, an amused smile still on his pretty lips. His eyes scan the walls and the furniture as he slowly makes his way in, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “I see that you’ve changed the entire room.”
Your eyes follow the direction of his gaze, scanning around the room as if you’d forgotten what you changed about the place. “Yeah.”
He struts toward you, getting so close that he’s practically pressed up against you. His onyx eyes stare you down, one of his infamous unreadable expressions plastered on his face. “Trying to act like I never existed?” he asks, hands still buried in his pockets and fuck, how you wish he would just give in and touch you.
You simply blink up at him, your eyes pingpong-ing between his eyes from left to right continuously as you try to think of a way to answer.
Should you lie? Should you just be honest?
As if on cue, your question is answered when he lazily places his right hand on your hip, pulling you even closer to him.
Be honest.
“No.” You shake your head slightly, never breaking eye contact with the enticing man in front of you. “I was never going to forget about you if everywhere I looked just reminded me of you.”
His hand tenses on your hip, a muscle in his jaw tenses up and your eyes are just in time to catch the way his Adam’s apple bounces up and down.
You shift your eyes back up to his, blinking your eyelids at him so innocently yet so full of temptation. He slowly starts nodding his head as if he just had an epiphany and then moves his hand from your hip to your waist.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, thumb rubbing circles onto your bare skin.
You shrug your shoulders smugly. “Thought you’d never ask.”
He doesn’t need anything else. His lips are on top of yours the moment the words leave your mouth, teeth clashing at how quickly he lunges at you.
His mouth devours you like a man starved as his other hand grips the back of your head to keep you in his grasp, his tongue forcing its way into your mouth.
Several soft moans resound in your throat that he simply swallows, hand balling into a fist on the back of your head, gripping your hair at the root.
You mewl, your hands coming up to squeeze his biceps as you try to grind your hips into his. Fuck, you’re like a fucking animal in heat.
“Fuck, I’m barely touching you and you’re this needy,” he whispers against your open mouth before shoving his tongue back in.
Your insides are set ablaze when he starts pushing you backwards with his own body until your calves hit the mattress and automatically makes you fall backwards, dropping onto your bed.
He wastes no time climbing on top of you, lips leaving a trail of wet kisses down the column of your throat to the strap of your bra as he gently starts tugging them off your shoulders.
You automatically arch your back off the mattress, encouraging him to unclasp your bra and he does.
Whilst he unclasps your bra, he coats your collarbones in soft kisses and absentmindedly throws your bra to the side as he brings his hand back up to fondle your breast in his large hand.
“Fuck,” you whisper, every single inch of his touch electrifies your body and sets your soul alight. Damn, you’ve missed this.
His thumb gently teases your erect nipple, rolling it around whilst he continues to nibble on the skin of your neck.
Your hips involuntarily buck upwards into nothing and you almost flinch at the way his breath grazes your neck when Yoongi softly chuckles, clearly finding your extreme level of arousal amusing.
“Can you just stop teasing me?” you whine, legs spreading wider and wider without a second thought.
“You’re gonna have to ask a lot nicer if you want me to do that, sugar.” He lifts his head off your shoulder and closes in on your other breast, wrapping his lips around it whilst his hand slowly travels down your stomach to your clothed sex. He starts sucking on your nipple and the effects of that pill makes it so it feels like he’s touching you all over, on every part of your body, on every inch of your skin. Causes you to squirm and moan under him like a fish separated from a body of water.
“Fuck,” he chuckles, “I should’ve made you take that pill so fucking long ago. Look at you.”
You simply grumble, “Fuck you.”
He lifts his head off your breast to stare at you directly in the eyes and you instantly regret running your mouth. “Yoongi, I just want–”
Smack!
“Ow!” you cry out, the warmth of the slap on your pussy spreading through your skin like wildfire. You instantly whimper, “I’m sorry.”
The apology means nothing to him, though.
He shakes his head. “Always running that fucking mouth of yours.” His fingers tuck under the hem of your shorts and he slides them down your legs before tossing them aside like he has personal beef with the article of clothing.
“Holy shit,” he whispers as he glances at the massive wet patch on your panties and all the slick smeared around your inner thighs, eyes practically bulging out of his eye sockets.
You can’t help but frown, though. “What?”
“No wonder,” he says, seemingly answering his own unspoken question. “You are completely soaked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this fucking horny.”
You whine, tucking your thumbs under the hem of your panties to drag them down your legs and he doesn’t even try to stop you, just simply stares at you in awe but your panties don’t budge an inch when you stop and decide to just give in, in hopes he’ll fall for your tricks.
“Please, just,” you yelp, “fuck me. Please. I think I’ll die if you don’t.”
He throws his head back as he laughs, his gorgeous neck on full display for you. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Yoongi,” you pause, “I’m so fucking serious. I’ve been thinking about you fucking me all day. I need you to. Please.”
He searches your face and seemingly takes note of the desperation and earnestness in your eyes. Shortly after, he drags his gaze down your exposed body, simply staring at your naked figure.
Sprawled out on your bed, lips swollen, a thin layer of sweat coating your skin, pupils dilated, breasts bare with nipples standing at attention and your arousal that has already started dripping onto your sheets.
He slowly starts to nod his head and in the blink of an eye, he yanks his own shirt off.
The view of his bare chest brings back so many memories, all the times he fucked you good come rushing back to you and it isn’t fucking helping your case.
A persistent lump forms in your throat that refuses to disappear but that’s when you realize that it’s not just a lump but words. The words ‘I miss you’ are forcing their way to the tip of your tongue, threatening to spill.
But you absolutely refuse to let that happen.
Just bite your tongue.
“All day, huh?” he muses, talking more to himself. He quickly ditches his sweatpants in the meantime and tosses them off the bed. “What took you so long to text me?”
You silently watch as he crawls back over to you in just his black boxers, settling right next to your body and supporting his own weight with his elbow while his other hand returns to your panties. Teasingly plays with the hem. Presses his lips against your neck. Inhales your scent.
You stay quiet for a few moments, eyes shut tightly at the tip of his fingers brushing against your pelvis. So close yet so far. “My pride,” you finally reply.
He simply chuckles at your words and slowly tucks his fingers under the hem of your panties, groaning when the back of his knuckles brush against the sticky patch of your arousal on the inside of your panties. “I don’t think I’ve seen this amount of wetness. Not even in porn.”
His skin finally makes contact with your sex, running right up your wet slit and collecting all of your arousal on the tip of his finger. “Holy fucking shit, Y/N.”
You mewl, hips already thrusting up into his hand but he simply uses his palm to press down on your pelvis.
“Stay still.” The demand makes your insides twist into a wringed out shirt and makes your pussy clench around nothing.
“I can’t,” you whimper, legs shaking at the simple touch of his fingers smearing your arousal all over your sex. “I’m trying to but I can’t.”
It’s like you have no control over your body whatsoever. You just want to be fucked.
“Why can’t you?” he quips as he plunges two fingers right into you, groaning when your slick walls tightly hug his fingers. He already knows, he just likes to push your buttons.
“Because I want you,” you breathe out, moaning at the sensation of his fingers slowly pumping into you. Your sensitivity is off the fucking charts, just his fingers being buried in your pussy without any movement whatsoever could have you cumming in no time.
“I can tell,” he cockily chuckles. His sultry laugh is so full of mockery, the type that would usually piss you the fuck off but in this moment turns you the fuck on. “I just need to prep you, baby. Can’t be hurting you simply because you’re writhing like an animal in heat.”
You quickly shake your head. “I don’t need any fucking prep,” you moan as his hand picks up in pace. “Please, just fuck me. I’m already wetter than I’ve ever been. You literally just said it yourself.”
He lifts his head off your collarbones and searches your eyes for a moment, a stern frown on his brows. “Are you sure?”
Yoongi’s always been into manhandling you and being rough but only when it’s pleasurable for you. He’d usually go down on you or work you towards an orgasm using just his fingers, in hopes it’d have you ready to take him.
So, no, he’s not used to just jumping in and fucking you.
You quickly nod your head. “Never been more sure.”
He stares at you for a moment longer but the sincerity in your eyes is prominent. He then simply spreads your folds with his sticky fingers, smearing your arousal all over your sex before pulling his fingers out of your pussy, the sounds leaving your sex almost embarrassing you.
He slides his hand out of your panties and glances at his hand, eyes scanning his fingers coated in your pussy slick.
“Fuck, look at that,” he whispers but doesn’t even grant you the time to look when he immediately shoves his fingers into his mouth, sucking all your arousal off his digits.
“Yoongi,” you whine, clenching around nothing as you watch him.
“Fuck, princess,” he grunts as he pulls his fingers out of his mouth. “It’s been too long. I’m gonna need to eat that.”
You want to protest but he’s already pulling you toward him by your thighs, settling in between them as he’s now face to face with your slick-covered panties.
“I want to be fucked,” you whine, staring down at him between your legs but his eyes are just focused on your panties.
He replies, “And I want to fucking eat you out so you’re gonna have to be patient, you little brat.”
You don’t have the time to whine any more when he pushes your panties to the side and the single action could have you coming undone, right here, right now.
He idly stares at your glistening pussy like he’s Monkey D. fucking Luffy and he found the One Piece after years of venturing the seas.
“Why are you staring like that?” you quietly ask, unfortunately not possessing enough strength to close your thighs out of self-consciousness.
With a simple shake of his head, his face closes in on your sex and he licks a long stripe up your pussy, collecting a great amount of your arousal in a single swipe of his hungry tongue.
But you’re oozing so much wetness that he simply keeps going, licking all around your sex before focusing on your swollen, angry clit. He wraps his lips around your sensitive pleasure nub and starts sucking, coating his entire chin in your juices.
“Fuck!” you cry, reaching over to pull on his roots, fingers tangled in his soft black locks.
The sensitivity you’re experiencing is too much. “I’m gonna fucking cum, Yoongi.” You’re not even joking.
“Already?” he hums in mockery before wrapping his lips around your clit again and sucks some more with no regard of overstimulating you.
You quickly nod your head and within the next few seconds, you’re cumming all over his tongue and around his mouth. A cry rips through your throat and you’re sobbing at this point, pulling so hard on his roots that it causes him to hiss in pain.
Grinding your hips up into his face, into his nose, into his mouth. You can’t believe how quickly that stupid pink pill has you levitating off the bed, it’s like you don’t even belong on Earth anymore.
The orgasm hits you like none ever before, leaving you even more sensitive. You came within barely, what? A minute of stimulation? Two? Oh, you’re so done for.
You push against Yoongi’s head in hopes he’ll stop and he does—after giving your swollen clit one last slurp.
“Holy shit.” You can’t believe that just happened.
“That was really fast. What was that? A minute? A minute and 30 seconds?” he laughs as he sits up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It’s that fucking pill,” you mumble defensively, trying to catch your breath.
A low chuckle leaves his mouth before he glances down at the bulge in his boxers. “Well,” he pauses, “you should take that pill more often.”
You roll your eyes with all the brattiness you can muster, hoping it annoys him as much as he annoys you. “This is the last time I’m even letting you in here, I hope you know that.”
His eyes shift back up to yours and he tilts his head to the side in question, blinking at you with a glimmer in his eyes that you can’t quite describe.
You stare back, trying your best not to look fucked out right now but you know you’re failing horribly at it when he simply shakes his head and lets out a bitter chuckle.
“You just wanted to use me one last time, hm?” he scoffs as his fingers tuck under the hem of his boxers, sliding them down his thighs and tossing them off the bed.
A surge of guilt spreads through your chest when you realize how that must’ve sounded to him. “You know that’s not what I meant, Yoongi.”
“No?” he muses, placing his hands on the back of your thighs before pushing them all the way against the mattress on each side of your body. You know your body isn’t supposed to be able to do this, apparent by the strain in your inner thighs but for some reason, it doesn’t bother you as much.
“No,” you whimper as he uses his own weight to keep your thighs spread, sliding his rock hard dick in between your folds handsfree, but not entering you just yet. It has you squeezing your eyelids shut, trying to focus on the feeling of his rock hard cock—all the ridges and veins on his dick—rubbing so good against your swollen clit.
“I don’t believe you,” he says, watching as you squirm from the slightest bit of friction that he has full control over. It makes you want to smack that grin right off his face.
“I swear,” you sniff, not even being able to thrust your hips up for more friction because Yoongi’s weight and strength keeps you restrained.
He simply hums in response, continuing to slide his dick over your slit, completely coating his shaft in your slick. “If you want me to believe you,” he pauses as his eyes shift up to yours, “you’re going to have to beg and convince me. Tell me how what you just said isn’t true.”
“Please,” you say, no hesitation. “Please, I didn’t mean that. I–just fuck me. I swear I don’t want anyone else to be in your position right now, I only want you. No one else knows me like you, no one.”
He continues to simply watch your face twist in borderline agony from the lack of friction, the sensation you so desperately crave.
“That so?” His tone is filled with so much arrogance that it makes your veins burn with lava.
You merely hum in response and finally crack your eyelids open, just to see him staring into your eyes with that familiar glint in his. Fuck.
“Ready?” he whispers, lining his tip up with your hole and cockily chuckles when you eagerly nod your head.
He abruptly freezes. “Ah, fuck, wait.” His dick is not on your slit anymore and it makes you frown at him.
“What?”
He groans, “I have no condoms.”
For fuck’s sake.
“I mean,” you start, “you’re the last person I had sex with. Did you have sex with anyone after me?”
You’re not sure you even want to hear about it but in this moment you’d do anything to just have him finally fuck the shit out of you.
He avoids your gaze as he keeps it glued to his dick sliding up and down your slit. “I have.”
Oh.
“But it was protected, always,” he adds with a quickness, tone calculated and quiet.
Oh.
Okay.
That’s good but it doesn’t make you feel any better.
You have to swallow your emotions at this moment because your pussy is basically screaming at you to just swallow your pride. “Okay, then just do it without.”
He peers up at you through his thick brows with a frown. “Are you sure?”
You mumble, “For fuck’s sake.” Your hand quickly reaches for his shaft but he slaps it away just as quickly.
“I know you’re horny as fuck but I need you to be 100%,” he pauses when he sees you glaring at his dick. “Look at me, dammit.”
Your eyes shift to his and you childishly groan. “Yes, Yoongi, I 100% consent to letting you fuck me raw. Now, will you please just–”
He doesn’t even let you finish talking as he slides his dick right into you, bottoming out completely. You yelp at the intrusion, your slick walls stretching around his shaft so well, like it always has.
“Holy shit,” he whispers with closed eyes, the disgusting squelching coming from your sexes is proof of your arousal and the moans falling from his lips as your pussy tightly hugs him sounds like a choir of angels sustaining a high C.
You try to keep quiet, you try not to squirm, you try not to say the craziest things right now. Like ‘I love you’, or ‘I’ve missed you so much’ because you’re just horny and dumb.
“Move,” you whimper, needing more than he’s giving you right now. He hears you loud and clear, sliding out of you and right back in. The disgusting squelching reaches your ears but you can’t bring yourself to care at the moment, not when Yoongi finds it hot and throws in occasional ‘fuck, listen to that’s and ‘you’re so fucking wet’s.
You cuss, eyes rolling to the back of your head when your sensitivity reaches its peak. A few more thrusts will already have you cumming, you’re sure of it.
He continues to thrust, slowly starting to pick up his pace and he finally cracks his eyelids open. His eyes find yours as he stares at you—scanning your pretty face that he loves to look at—especially when it’s twisted in pleasure like that.
Brows furrowed, lips swollen, pupils dilated, mouth agape, a thin layer of sweat draped over your forehead and building up in your hairline.
Somewhere along the line, the eye contact becomes too intense for you. Your hand snakes around the back of his head, closing the distances between you two by pulling him closer to you, licking and sucking on the honey tinted skin of his neck.
After a while of sucking and nipping at his neck and his thrusts never coming to a halt, your orgasm starts approaching you rapidly again. “I’m gonna cum,” you cry, tears pricking in your eyes from the pure pleasure that’s setting all your insides ablaze.
“Already?” he murmurs as he leans down, kissing away the tears that have subtly started rolling down your temples. “But I have yet to ruin you.”
Fuck.
“Whatever, though. I guess you’re just going to lose count of the amount of orgasms I’ll fuck you through.” He states it so nonchalantly because he knows only he could ever make you feel like this, make you desperate like this, make you a needy mess like this.
His hips continue to harshly snap into yours, the indescribable sensation of being fucked at this angle and pace has your thighs clenching. Unsurprisingly not long after, your orgasm hits you full force once again.
A sob rips through your throat, your trembling hands grab at his shoulders, nails painfully digging into his skin as he fucks you through your high. His low chuckle rings in your ear, breath hitting your throat as he lowers his face into the crook of your neck.
“Cumming all over my dick and sucking marks on my neck. Are you trying to claim me again?” he whispers, knowing how possessiveness was big a turn on for the both of you back in your relationship.
You simply cry under him, the orgasm lasting longer than any you’ve ever had before. His dick kisses your cervix repeatedly, your breasts bounce continuously from the momentum of his thrusts and the sound of his skin slapping yours only increases in volume the longer he fucks you.
“I asked you something,” he says, lifting his head off your shoulder to stare down at you. “Where’d that bratty mouth that I love so much go?”
You simply grunt in response, teary eyes glaring at him as you slowly come down from your high. The corners of his lips curl up in a twisted smirk at the sight in front of him, you know he enjoys seeing you in this state and him being the sole cause of it pleases him greatly.
The overstimulation is starting to catch up to you. Your hand basically moves on its own, pressing flat into his lower abdomen in order to get him to slow down.
However, it means nothing to him. He simply continues to thrust into you like he’s got something to prove. “Answer me, Y/N. Do you want to claim me again?” he repeats.
You mewl, sinking your cranium further into your soft pillows, exposing more of your throat and neck to him as tears continue to pour out of your eyes.
“Fuck you,” you whimper, digging your nails into the skin around his belly button but it doesn’t elicit a single reaction from him.
He simply chuckles at your snarky comment as he lowers his lips onto your throat, sucking and nipping at it. You know he expected you to say that. No one else knows you like the back of their hand like he does.
“There’s my girl,” he mumbles against your skin. His words paired with the simple act of kissing your neck has all your insides clenching and twisting with something you can’t quite describe.
Butterflies?
Something you’re not going to admit out loud.
“I don’t appreciate you talking to me like that, though.” With one more thrust, he pulls out of you and harshly flips you onto your stomach. You don’t even have the time to react when he gently grabs your hips yet roughly hoists your ass up off the mattress.
A sharp sting spreads through your asscheek and that’s when you realize his rough hand came down on your bum, spanking you hard.
“Ow!” you screech in pain yet pleasure, every vein in your body pumping blood faster and faster as you anticipate exactly why, of all people, you called Yoongi over.
He doesn’t even give you the time to come down from that spanking before he gives you another one. And another one. And another one.
“You ask me to come over after not talking to me for months, then beg me to fuck you. I give you what you want and you still have the audacity to be so rude to me?” He clicks his tongue loudly and immediately after the scolding, spanks you yet again. “Biting the hand that feeds you. Tsk. I should cum in that filthy mouth of yours for talking to me like this.”
He shoves his dick back inside without a warning and continues to assault your poor asscheeks, rough palms continuously coming down to your ass in loud smacks.
You hoarsely cry out under him, most likely from the embarrassment because thanks to that damn pill you might cum from just being spanked at this point.
As if he heard your thoughts, the spanking comes to an end and his hands are now flat on your back, keeping you pressed into the mattress with his weight while he starts fucking into you again. “You like getting fucked from the back, right?”
Your ass bounces back against his hips with each thrust, adding more and more sensations to your body. You’re not going to last for very much longer.
He mumbles, “No, that’s not it.” He leans forwards, pressing his chest into your back, lips grazing the shell of your ear and he places his hands against the mattress on each side of your waist, supporting his own weight. “You just love being fucked like a slut.”
Fuck.
“Isn’t that right? You don’t care in what position you get fucked in, as long as you’re getting fucked, hm? Like the horny slut you are.” He remembers exactly what you like and it’s embarrassing. “My slut, though. No one else’s.”
And you admit that yes, you wouldn't just want any stranger to talk to you like this.
It only works with Yoongi because he knows you. Because he understands you. Because he loves you.
Or he did once, at least.
But him showing up at your front door, no questions asked, 10 minutes after you asked him to, might be proof of something you both are trying to deny. Not like it matters.
“Fuck, I’m gonna cum,” you moan. You’ve already lost count but it doesn’t matter, not when he’s fucking you so good.
“Cumming so quickly from just being talked to like this. I bet you’ve missed my filthy mouth just as much as I missed yours,” he whispers into your ear, pressing soft kisses to your skin in a way only a lover should. “I fucking love it.”
The soft kissing and the low volume of his voice are a stark contrast to the rough pounding of his hips and the degrading words leaving his lips.
And you can’t help but love it.
“Tell me I’m right,” he demands as he picks up the pace, snaking one hand around to wrap around your throat and pull you up until the back of your head collides with his shoulder. “Tell me it’s true.”
Now with your orgasm approaching, he knows you’d do anything to get there.
He knows you too well.
“Fuck, I love it!” you cry as your nth orgasm washes over you, your body violently jerking under him from the overstimulation you’re experiencing.
“I know you do,” he chuckles as he fucks you through your orgasm. “That’s my girl. My fuckin’ girl.”
Fuck.
He has no idea what those words do to you.
Well, it’s Yoongi. He definitely knows what it’s doing to you.
Because you are not his girl. Not anymore.
But you don’t have the energy to correct him nor do you want to. Because at this moment, it feels like the two of you never separated. Like you never spent a day apart. All of the nostalgia, love and hate comes rushing back to you. Surely it’s that stupid pink pill’s fault.
He pulls out in a swift motion and turns you onto your side before he lies down behind you on his side as well, chest pressed into your back as he pulls you closer.
Fuck, how many positions is he going to fuck you in? Is he making up for all the time you spent apart?
Now that you’re in spooning position, he gently places his hand under your thigh and lifts it up to spread your legs. His hand leaves your thigh as he uses the same hand to guide his dick to your pussy again.
Your thigh almost wants to give out and drop, your chest still dramatically rising and falling as you chase your breath.
Another cocky chuckle rumbles in his chest at how you struggle to even move now, his hot breath draping over your neck and his hand returning to the same spot on your inner thigh as he lifts your leg again and pushes into you.
Your head falls back, falling deeper into his embrace and he welcomes that by pressing soft kisses to your shoulder. “I don’t know how I survived all those months without y–” he pauses, “your pussy.”
Hmph. He’s the pussy if he doesn’t want to admit he misses you.
But then again, he was never that type. Yoongi was never the type to show his love through words but rather through actions and services, he had difficulties expressing his affection with words.
Like when it took him a year to say ‘I love you’ yet everyday after he came home from an exhausting day at work, he’d pull your feet into his lap and massage them in hopes of offering you some kind of relief.
Or when the topic of wedding vows came up and he said he finds them useless yet he’d buy you a fresh set of bouquets every week until down to the very week you broke up.
Or when he’d place a glass of water on your nightstand everyday when he left for work, whether he fucked the shit out of you the night before or not.
Yoongi always just showed you.
And now that he’s balls deep in your pussy, now that the effects of that pill are clouding your mind, now that his proximity is distorting your mind and setting all your nerve-endings alight again, you have to consciously stop yourself from asking him to come back home—back to you.
Your mind is so distorted that you don’t even recall the bad moments or the reason for your break up right now. You just miss him.
“How are you feeling?” he whispers in your ear, thrusting his hips into you at a considerably slower pace but by no means lacking in strength and passion.
“Like I’m fucking floating on a cloud,” you mumble back, body almost falling limp at his proximity and his dick rubbing your walls so deliciously.
He simply chuckles, “That’s what I like to hear.”
He continues to fuck into you, occasionally groaning and fondling your breast. “Fuck,” he mumbles, pressing another kiss to the back of your neck.
“Yoongi, I–”
“I know.”
You don’t even know.
You don’t even know what you were going to say.
But his confident ‘I know’ proves to you that he knows.
Thanks to his slow pace, it takes your orgasm a little longer to approach and thank fuck for that.
“I’m gonna cum soon,” he tells you, rubbing your tummy from the back. “Where do you want it?”
“I don’t care where you cum as long as you kiss me during it.”
Damn. Why the fuck would you say that?
Great. He just abruptly stopped thrusting. You’re such a fucking idiot.
You would have never been able to admit this if you didn’t take that stupid pill or even if you weren’t facing him with your back.
He swiftly pulls out and wraps his fingers around your bicep to turn you around, making you face him now. Still in spooning position but this time facing each other, he pulls you close, lifting your leg onto his hip as he guides his dick back into you and propping your head up on his bicep.
His hand finds its way back to your asscheek and squeezes the soft skin in his rough hand as he pulls you even closer, pressing your chest right into his.
“Cum with me, baby. You’re doing so good.”
He’s so mean for doing this. So mean for the things he says, so mean for fucking you exactly as you like it, so mean for making you feel like you still belong to him. Like he belongs to you.
He thrusts his hips into you faster and sure enough, the effects of the pill get to work because your stomach starts twisting from the inside immediately after the change of pace and his request of cumming together.
Your fucked out eyes meet his determined ones, staring into those black bottomless pits of his as he chases his own release.
He simply stares back, eyes occasionally dropping to your lips. In this moment, his eyes are everywhere you look, his breath hits every inch of your skin, his hand on your hip holds you so tightly that you think be might crack your hipbone. He’s inside your head. He’s everywhere. He’s everything.
It seems like he wants to say something but his attention gets disrupted by the sound of something buzzing on the nightstand behind you.
It’s his phone.
He tears his eyes away from yours, reaching for it whilst still being inside of you and by the guilty look on his face, it doesn’t take a genius to decipher it must be someone whose arms and bed he found comfort in after separating from you.
When he thinks you must’ve realized, he tosses his phone off the bed and returns his attention to you.
But he doesn’t owe you anything. Not an explanation. Not an apology. Not even love.
It’s quiet for a few moments, just your occasional soft moaning and his heavy breathing as you close your eyes to avoid his gaze.
Until you crack your eyelids open again and find out he’s been staring at you the entire time. Your walls tightly clench around him again, indicating your orgasm is close. “Just call me your girl again,” you whisper, allowing the vulnerability to escape your system once again.
Dumb bitch.
“You are. You are my girl,” is all he says before pressing his lips against yours as promised, grabbing a handful of your asscheek as he snaps his hips into yours and forces his tongue into your mouth.
You let his tongue force itself past your swollen lips, crying into his mouth as another orgasm sends electricity down all your limbs, making your brain explode with ridiculous amounts of dopamine and launching you straight to your Utopia.
You murmur some shit into his mouth that even you don’t understand, voice coming and going whenever it pleases, more and more slick gushing out of your completely drenched pussy. Tears continue to escape and roll down your temples, your nose is runny, your voice is hoarse.
A soft moan resounds in Yoongi’s throat when his own orgasm hits him, thrusts getting inconsistent and rough as he starts painting your walls with his warm cum, groaning loudly into your mouth which you happily welcome.
This is otherworldly.
Nothing will ever feel like this moment right here and you’re not sure whether you’ve accepted that yet.
He fucks both of you through your orgasms, pumping his load into you like it belongs inside of you and fuck, have you missed the feeling.
With a few more sloppy thrusts, creating a mess everywhere, his thrusting comes to a halt yet he never stops kissing you.
He curls his arm so your head shifts on his bicep even closer towards his face, keeping his dick buried in you, eliciting a simple sigh in content from the ex-girlfriend in his arms.
After an extra few minutes of nonstop making out with a man that was once yours, you’re the one that pulls away. Your stomach clenches with something you can’t describe when you watch him still chase your lips until he realizes you’ve pulled away, making him slowly open his eyes.
Is it guilt? Is it desire? Is it regret?
Fuck. Fuck. This whole idea just wasn’t smart.
You did your best to rid yourself of the stain he planted on you, closing the mark where he sunk his fangs so deeply into your skin, into your soul. You’re letting him reopen it and you’re so damn fucking stupid for it.
And you don’t understand why he’s the only one you want. No one else.
He stares at you for a moment before pressing his forehead against yours, still trying to catch his breath.
You stay unmoved for a few more moments before he delicately pecks your lips again and gently pulls his softening dick out of you, your nose scrunching when his load starts to leak out of you and onto your sheets.
He doesn’t say much else as he gets up from your bed, eyes searching the floor for something before he hunches over and slides his boxers back up his legs.
He leaves your bedroom without another word, making you simply frown at the ceiling but he quickly reappears with a glass of water and a damp towel.
He hasn’t changed a bit.
He takes care of you like nothing’s changed, cleaning your body up, changing the sheets while you don’t move a muscle, tucking you under the fresh covers and making sure you drink your water before opening the windows in an attempt to get some fresh air after you’ve fogged up the windows in the room.
He sits at the edge of your bed, gently tracing your hairline with the tip of his finger. “How are you feeling?”
If only he knew.
Your mouth slightly curls at the corners, a lazy smile plastered on your lips. “I feel amazing.”
Another sultry chuckle leaves his mouth as he nods his head in agreement.
This is nice.
But your mind changes when you silently watch him rising to his feet and slowly reaching for his clothes.
Ugh.
You’ve been vulnerable enough.
You asked him to come do one thing and he did it. You can’t ask much more of him.
But your heart works faster than your brain.
“Can you stay the night?” you quietly ask, fidgeting with your fingers under the sheets, relieved that he can’t see.
He glances at you over his shoulder, a frown on his brows. It seems like he thinks about it for a moment before parting pretty his lips to say, “What?”
Fuck.
Your voice goes even quieter, thinking of a way to reformulate the question. “Do you want to stay the night?”
He idly blinks at you, eyes staring straight into your soul as if you just asked him the most absurd question that you could’ve asked him. “Do you want me to?”
The neutral tone of his voice simply makes you shrug your shoulders in response, avoiding his intense gaze that always makes you feel like no one else exists in his mind but you.
Stupid.
“Y/N,” says Yoongi, quietly. Your eyes twinkle up at him, the clear look of a dilemma plastered on your face. He closes the distance between you two, hovering over your body before repeating his question with a bit more bluntness. “Do you want me to?”
Your swollen bottom lip is trapped between your teeth, veins pumping with anxiety and anticipation.
You sniffle a bit in hopes that it makes the tension and silence less awkward. “Yeah.”
Your eyes trail his features, remembering how gorgeous he actually is. How could you ever forget? His thick brows, his sharp eyes, his plump lips, his soft nose, his beautiful hair.
The next few words that leave his mouth rip you right out of your thoughts.
“Then I’ll stay,” he pauses, “for however long you want me to.”
⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆
⋆ MASTERLIST & CONCEPT VIDEO ⋆
⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ⋆
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dedalvs · 4 months
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Hey! I'm David Peterson, and a few years ago, I wrote a book called Create Your Own Secret Language. It's a book that introduces middle grade readers to codes, ciphers, and elementary language creation. The age range is like 10-14, but skews a little bit older, as the work gets pretty complicated pretty quick. I think 12-13 is the best age range.
Anyway, I decided to look at the Amazon page for it a bit ago, and it's rated fairly well (4.5 at the moment), but there are some 1 star reviews, and I'm always curious about those. Usually they're way off, or thought the book was going to be something different (e.g. "This book doesn't teach you a thing about computer coding!"), but every so often there's some truth in there. (Oh, one not 1 star but lower rated review said they gave it to their 2nd grader, but they found it too complicated. I appreciate a review like that, because I am not at all surprised—I think it is too complicated for a 2nd grader—and I think a review like that is much more effective than a simple 10+ age range on the book.) The first 1 star rating I came to, though, was this:
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Now calling a completely mild description of a teenage girl who has a crush on another girl controversial is something I take exception to, but I don't want to pile on this person. Instead I wanted to share how this section came to be in the book.
The book is essentially divided into four parts. The first three parts deal with different ciphers or codes that become more complicated, while the last part describes elementary language creation. The first three sections are each built around a message that the reader can decode, but with language creation, the possibilities are too numerous and too complicated, so there isn't an example to decode, or anything. It would've been too difficult.
For what the messages to decode are about, though, I could do, potentially, anything, so at first I thought to tie them into a world of anthropomorphic animals (an ongoing series of battles between cats and mice), with messages that are being intercepted and decoded. My editor rejected that. Then I redid it so that each section had an individual story that had to do with some famous work of literature. My editor rejected that as well. He explained that it needed to be something that was relevant to kids of the target age range. I was kind of at a loss, for a bit, but then I thought of a story of kids sending secret messages about their uncle who eats too many onions. I shared that, my editor loved it, and I was like, all right. I can do this.
The tough part for me in coming up with mini-stories to plan these coded messages around was coming up with a reason for them to be secret. That's the whole point of a code/cipher: A message you want to be sure no one else but the intended recipient can read in case the message is intercepted. With the first one, two kids are poking gentle fun at a family member, so they want to be sure no one else can read what they're writing. For the last one, a boy is confessing to a diary, because he feels bad that he allowed his cat to escape, but no one knows he did it (he does find the cat again). For the other, I was trying to think of plausible message-sending scenarios for a preteen/teen, and I thought of how we used to write notes in, honestly, 4th and 5th grade, but I aged it up a bit, and decided to have a story about a girl writing a note to her friend because she has a crush on another girl, and wants her friend's opinion/help.
Here's where the point of sharing this comes in. As I had originally written it, the girl's note to her friend was not just telling her friend about her crush, it was also a coming out note, and she was concerned what her parents would react poorly.
Anyway, I sent that off with the rest of my draft, and I got a bunch of comments back on the whole draft (as expected), but my editor also commented on that story, in particular. Specifically, he noted that not every LGBTQ+ story has to be a coming out story, the part about potential friction between her and her parents because of it was a little heavy for the book, and, in general, not every coming out story has to be traumatic.
That was all he said, but I immediately recognized the, in hindsight, obvious truth of all three points, and I was completely embarrassed. I changed it immediately, so that the story beats are that it's a crush, she's not sure if it'll be reciprocated, and she's also very busy with school and band and feels like this will be adding even more busy-ness to her daily life as a student/teen. Then I apologized for making such a blunder. My editor was very good about it—after all, that's what drafts and editors are for—and that was a relief, but I'm still embarrassed that I didn't think of it first.
But, of course, this is not my lived experience, not being a member of the LGBTQ+ community. This is the very reason why you have sensitivity readers—to provide a vantage point you're blind to. In this case, I was very fortunate to have an editor who was thinking ahead, and I'm very grateful that he was there to catch it. That editor, by the way, is Justin Krasner.
One reason I wanted to share this, though, is that while it always is a bit of a difficult thing to speak up, because there might be a negative reaction, sometimes there is no pushback at all. Indeed, sometimes the one being called out is grateful, because we all have blindspots due to our own lived experiences. You can't live every life. For that reason, your own experience will end up being valuable to someone at some point in time for no other reason than that you lived it and they didn't. And, by the by, this is also true for the present, because the lives we've lived cause us to see what's going on right before our eyes in different lights.
Anyway, this is a story that wouldn't have come out otherwise, so I wanted to be sure to let everyone know that Justin Krasner ensured that my book was a better book. An editor's job is often silent and thankless, so on Thanksgiving, I wanted to say thank you, Justin. <3
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paragonrobits · 2 months
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More fun Calvin and Hobbes facts!
Not only is Hobbes NOT an imaginary friend by word of the comic's creator, Bill Watterson, but he doesn't seem to know what an imaginary friend is, nor that plush toys in general are actually toys; Susie Derkins (a girl Calvin has complicated feelings about and tends to randomly alternate between prosecuting a rivalry between the two of them and seeming to regard her as a friend or at least someone he bothers talking to) has a plush bunny she calls Mr Bun, and Hobbes at one point notes with some concern that he seems comatose.
The comic was well known for its lavish backgrounds, and two chiefly notable examples include the woods around Calvin's house and the landscapes of his imagination; in the former, he and Hobbes often go exploring, sledding or racing around on a little red wagon, often while expressing philosophical insights (usually ending in Calvin crashing into something in a way that underscores the point of the dialogue).
On that above note, in the latter case, Calvin often imagines elaborate and fanciful settings such as alien worlds, and the tone of a lot of these vary between comedic bits of Calvin pestering people by shooting them with darts while his fantasy portrays him as a space hero fighting horrible blobby creatures.
Calvin And Hobbes probably wasn't the FIRST comic strip to follow then-current paleontological debates and scientific course, but it was written at the exact right time of increasing interest in dinosaurs as public consciousness accepted the image of them as clever, quick-moving and fierce creatures instead of the slow-moving brutes doomed to die out from earlier perspectives; while the comic initially did depict them as something akin to retrosaurs, this died away very quickly and the comic was an entry point for becoming a Dinosaur Kid for a lot of people i think
There is often a division between the vibrantly illustrated worlds of Calvin's imagination against the much more dull visuals of school he has to deal with; he frequently has trouble with his school work, he's EXTREMELY prone to acting out and causing mischief at school, and school is often portrayed as a dull, exhausting and tiring thing he hates above everything else. His fantastical worlds are fun and lovingly illustrated; the world he has to actually deal with is at best tiring.
Hobbes is essentially his only friend. Calvin doesn't really seem to want to deal with other people at all (he seems to find it difficult at best and the few times he does, he comes off as out of his depth and uncertain). While he pesters Susie at the best of times, she is also notably the ONLY person he goes out of his way to talk to at all, and some of his comments to her are strongly revealing.
Calvin himself is an EXTREMELY intelligent kid, often discussing deeply philosophical stuff, and its frequently brought up that no one knows why he struggles with schoolwork as much as he does. At one point Susie even raises the question and he gloomily replies that he finds his life is easier if he lets everyone's expectations for him be as low as possible. Interpretations have ranged from him being an undiagnosed kid on the autistic spectrum (not unlikely, given this was written from the mid 80s to mid 90s) to simply reflecting the anxieties of school for many kids of the era.
This strip exists:
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backwardsbread · 9 days
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Hazbin Hotel:
Lucifer x Human!Reader
~The Devil’s in My Living Room~
Warnings‼️: Swearing, mentions of a breakup, Lucifer being a goofball, blood but very little, genderneutral!reader, character x reader.
A/N: Sooo. I don’t usually do full fanfics, but this idea has been invading my mind and I just had to get it out. If anyone wants a part 2, I have a lot more ideas! But I hope you enjoy my brainrot- <3
-I tried to proofread but if there are any mistakes, let me know!
Moving into a new space was difficult.
Anyone knew that. It was complicated, bittersweet, and downright exhausting.
And something you completely procrastinated doing, until your friend threatened to kick you out if you didn’t at least try to find a new place to live.
You had been hopping from couch to couch at your friends houses after a recent breakup with your long term partner.
The breakup was a mutual agreement between the two of you. The feelings that once felt like fireworks burned out into ashes. It had been a long time coming, but your heart still shattered when it was officially over.
This new house was sort of a new chapter and a step forward into figuring out life without your ex. You had no idea where to start, but being able to find such a cheap home to rent out seemed like a dream come true.
Or a scam. Either way you were desperate.
The house was at an insanely good price, wasn’t falling apart, and in the part of town that you found to be the acceptable amount of sketchy. Maybe a bit far from the city, but finding a decent place in the city was a pain in the ass.
Before you could think twice about whether or not this was really a good idea, you were signing all the paperwork and moving your belongings into the house.
You had shoved most of the boxes with your belongings into your basement. You set up the basic essentials you needed, clothes, kitchenware, blankets, etc. Several trips were often made up and down the stairs when you had forgotten something was still stored away.
It was completely inconvenient but you lacked the motivation to unpack everything all at once. It felt like too much work and in you convinced yourself the constant up and down was easier.
Family and friends helped you get settled, keeping you company the first couple days of your move. But they all had to move onto their own lives eventually. Wishing you well on the new chapter of your life, letting you know to reach out whenever you needed, friends and family went back to their respective houses.
So there you sat, alone in your house that felt much too old for you. While you were content living there, the house felt like it was covered in layers of dust from the lack of visitors roaming its rooms. The air felt heavy in a way that made you just feel uncomfortable.
At least there was a roof over your head. Adapting to living on your own was strange, but you passed the time by picking up all sorts of hobbies, none of which really stuck. Just a way to pass the time.
The hobby of the week was sewing.
You sat on your living room floor in front of your TV, letting whatever reality show play in the background while you focused on the task at hand.
You squint, hands shaking a bit, as you tried to thread the thin piece of string into the hooped end of the needle. You stick your tongue out in concentration as the string seemed to favor going anywhere but where you wanted.
Your intense gaze on the small objects was broken by the sound of an advertisement; with an actor who was certainly way too enthusiastic to be authentic. The shift in volume made you jump up, eyes darting to the screen, and needle grazing the side of your finger.
You let out a frustrated huff, silently cursing the overpaid actor for his theatrics. Feeling a slight sting on the side of your hand from where the needle had pricked your skin, drawing some blood.
Looking at your hand where the blood smeared against your skin, you sigh in defeat, getting up and walking towards your kitchen to rinse your hand.
A sudden gush of hot wind stops you in your tracks, followed by a blinding light coming from behind you. You turn around, stunned by the almost blinding light coming up from your floor. The light and confined to a large circle in the center of your living room where you once sat.
A shadowed figure can barely be seen through the hues of gold and orange, you can only make out red eyes blinking alive.
When light and smoke fades you finally see the person— or thing?? That had just straight up appeared in your home.
A short being, with skin white as paper. With two long horns protruding out of his skull, a small flame between them. His glowing eyes look at his surrounds, as he bared his dagger like teeth.
He wore a white suit, his undershirt decorated with gold and red details. On top his head was a tall white top hat with a purple snake curled up comfortably at the base.
He looked around your living room, doing a small spin as he took in his surroundings.
Where in hell was he??
He looks equally confused and stunned as you do. When you meet each others gaze it’s nothing short of awkward. Just looking at each other. His horns shrink back into his head, his eyes turning to an amber color with ruby pupils.
The man looks like he just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
He gives a too wide grin, chuckling nervously and giving a wave to you. You just sat there stunned, eyes blown wide and mouth agape.
“Uhhh.. Hi.”
He finally spoke, making you finally blink a few times.
Oh- oh it talks.
“Hi…?”
You answer back cautiously, not really knowing the exact reason you answered the being who just straight up appeared in your living room.
The awkward tension flooded back into the room, the two of you just observing each other in silence.
The pale man rocked back and forth on his feet, tugging the collar of his shirt, as his eyes darted around the unfamiliar place.
You had to be dreaming… you rub your eyes, ready to wake up from this imaginary reality.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You were in fact not dreaming.
The next few hours of your life dragged and felt so surreal.
At first you tried to ignore the thing in your house, carrying on with your house chores you suddenly found important to do. Every time you passed by him, he would wave his arms around trying to get your attention.
“Helloooooo?? I know you see me and I see youuu..”
He knew you could see him.
And you knew he knew you could see him.
He seemed to be confined to a small circle in the middle of your living room. You found this out when the demon started pressing his face against the invisible bubble containing him. Pressing his cheek and lips against the unseen force holding him. He pressed his face against the bubble like a child, making obnoxious faces and noises at you.
He never really tried to hurt or attack you. That was a good sign. When you had stepped a bit too close he did try to reach for your arm once or twice, but his hand just phased through your body, sending uncomfortable shivers down your spine.
Overall he mostly looked bored
Every time you walked through your living room you tried avoiding anywhere near the demon. Which was difficult considering he was stuck smack dab in the center of the room.
When trying to grab at you to get your attention failed. He decided on a different approach. Deciding to sit on the ground, taking off his suit jacket, folding it and refolding it over and over.
All while ranting about his extensive rubber duck collection.
Your eye starts to twitch.
Seriously, what the fuck was happening?
You didn’t know how many ducks the demon had informed you about, it felt like hundreds. He would take pauses between each explanation, almost teasing the idea of him stopping his tangents.
He had finally stopped ranting about his recent invention of a rubber duck that spits fire and did backflips. Letting a moment of silence fall.
You felt your shoulders relax, appreciating the peace and quiet…..until he started up again about another yellow duck shaped creation.
You finally snapped, he had finally gotten under your skin.
Your head snaps towards the demon in your living room, cutting off his words before he can start rambling again.
“Okay! Fine fine, you win! I see you! I hear you, what is up with you and the ducks??”
“Hah! I knew it!”
Lucifer throws his hands up in victory, celebrating the fact he was being acknowledged. He stood up, drawing a line with his finger against the invisible glass holding him.
“Score one for Lucifer~”
You drag your hands down your face, ready to claw your eyes out from when the demon celebrated winning over your silent treatment.
Wait. What was that name again??
“Lucifer? As in the devil? The fucking devil is in my living room??”
Lucifer gives you a confused look, picking his cane up off the ground. He observed your expression trying to tell if you were joking or not.
“Uh.. yeah.. hey hey! You’re the one who summoned me.. thought you would know that..”
“Summon you? I didn’t summon anything!”
Lucifer tilted his head at you, his eyes squinting and mouth hanging open slightly. Were you serious? How does one accidentally do a demonic ritual?
By the look on his face, you can see he’s equally in the dark about how he got here just as you are.
You look Lucifer up and down, pinching yourself on your side once again to ensure you’re not dreaming.
How could this.. how could this be the devil?
Sure, when he first appeared, you saw your life flash before your eyes, seeing the large horns, sharp teeth and red eyes. The whole thing you expected to see if you ever somehow were face to face with Lucifer himself.
But now he just looked like a shy awkward circus clown.
“I thought the devil was supposed to be.. ya know.. scary?”
Lucifer gasps dramatically, putting over a hand over where his heart would be— did he even have one? Was that possible?-
He straight up POUTS, turning his back to you taking full offense to your comment on his nonthreatening demeanor.
“I prefer terrifying, thank you very much! I thought humans knew better than to still mess with demonic rituals and practices.”
He shoots back in an accusatory tone, turning back to you and pressing his finger against the bubble.
“I didn’t summon you! You just showed up in my house!”
He looks down at his feet, tracing the circle where he had been confined to in your home with his cane.
“So.. you just.. accidentally… drew a pentagram.. and did all the stupidly excessive and tedious steps in my summoning ritual.. somehow correctly…”
The devil tried to explain how nonsensical your excuse sounded. You looked down at your living room floor, puzzled by what Lucifer had meant. All you saw beneath him was a neutral colored carpet that covered the entirety of your living room. Nothing seemed odd or off about it.
“Pentagram? What pentagram?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
With a quick google search about the history of your home, you find out the reason is was listed at such an amazing price. Your mouth hangs open as your read the gruesome details.
A satanic cult coming to this very house, trying to summon Satan. Apparently the group had stolen tools, a car, and a local farmers livestock to perform the ritual before police busted them.
Well you just made summoning him look like a casual Tuesday.
The information explained the pentagram that contained the Devil in your living room, who was peering over your shoulder to try and read the articles about your home. You sat just outside his reach, his cheek pressing against the invisible bubble of his pentagram prison.
Seeing the demon peer over your shoulder couldn’t help but make you feel a bit uneasy.
Slamming your computer shut, you turn towards Lucifer, who was waiting impatiently for an explanation.
It was a weird sight. Both of you sat criss crossed a few feet apart from each other. What on Earth did you do to be put in this situation?
You pinched yourself again to make sure you weren’t dreaming.
“So what’s the verdict?”
Nope. Still awake.
“Apparently years back, some sort of cult came here trying to summon satan- well you.”
“Uhh.. for what?”
“Hell if I know, I couldn’t find any sources that said their reasoning. But I’m guessing that’s why this place was dirt cheap and that’s how you’re somehow here now.”
You pinch the bridge of your nose, trying to make sense of it all. Maybe you should’ve done some research before getting a house at such a cheap rate.
But it was such a steal- how could you resist?
“What did I do to get you here anyways? It’s not like I was chanting your name while killing a goat. Do I need to buy a Bible or something?”
You asked, making a little cross with your index fingers, moving it towards Lucifer’s face as if he would disappear with your mockery of him.
Lucifer looked exhausted by your cliches, but you were pretty much spot on with how people usually worshipped him.
He rolled his eyes, resting his elbow on his knee, so he could hold his chin in his hand.
“Well, what did you do before I got here?”
You explained your little incident with the sewing needle, showing off your hand that didn’t even look like it was injured anymore. The only evidence that the injury even happened being a bit of dried blood on your palm.
“Hey, not to be rude or anything.. but If you don’t want to be here anyways, why can’t you just.. ya know? Leave?”
Lucifer looked at you, twisting his cane and chuckling nervously, flashing his sharp teeth at you.
“Well.. usually with these things there’s an exchange. Human sells me their soul, sacrifices, the whole nine yards, haha!.. Mostly in exchange for my power.”
You shift back away from Lucifer cautiously, even though there was no way of him really getting to you.
“So.. you need my soul or something?”
Lucifer pursed his lips, twiddling his thumbs and avoiding your gaze. Acting as if you were the one who was making this whole situation difficult.
“I mean, I don’t know, that’s usually how it goes.”
“How do you not know??”
“I don’t know! You’re the one who summoned me without knowing!”
“…”
“Touché.”
A moment of silence fell on the two of you, both clearly frustrated with no clear solution of how to fix this in sight.
It wasn’t like you were willingly going to give yourself up to the Devil. You didn’t even want him here in the first place.
Well. Not that you minded his company at the moment.
Was it kind of fucked you were talking to the devil and didn’t mind the company? Probably.
But ever since you had moved out of you and your ex’s house, your home just felt empty. Bare, lacking energy and life.
You weren’t used to being alone all the time.
Lucifer sighed, clearing his throat to break the tension in the room. He took in a deep breath, looking at you.
“Listen. I can’t really leave permanently unless you get an exorcism on your house. But until then, I’m kind of bound to you.”
“Woah woah woah, pump the breaks, bound to me?”
Lucifer shrugged, as if the fact was obvious. He held his legs, rocking back on his tailbone while looking around your living room once more, almost memorizing it.
“Yeah..! Well uh.. you should be able to summon me back whenever you prick your finger or…something like that? I can leave whenever I want.”
You stared at him blankly.
This whole time. This whole time he could’ve left but instead bothered for your attention until you caved and acknowledged his existence.
“You’re telling me this NOW?”
Lucifer put his hands up in defensive, quickly speaking up before you could get more angry at him.
“Hey! I did you a favor. Figured you would want to know I’m stuck with you. But hey! Good news is once I leave, I’ll be out of your hair for good!”
He had stuck around bothering you.. just to tell you that? That was an oddly sweet gesture from the literal DEVIL. But you appreciated the clarification and.. kindness.
Not once did Lucifer even try to hurt you, it didn’t even seem like he could. He seemed more awkward and anxious. And overall, he looked exhausted.
Dark under eyes that stood out on his paper white skin accompanied by hollow cheeks. I mean, you knew he was dead, but he looked just..
Numb? Maybe that was the word for it. Why were you even thinking about this? No way were you feeling bad pity for the Devil.
You had so many questions. What was Hell like? If Hell is real, what about heaven? Reincarnation? Angels? Bad omens?
Lucifer probably had all the answers to the ongoing list of questions you had growing in your mind. But a more simple question fell from your mouth rather than one about life as a whole.
“And if I summon you back?”
Lucifer looked at you, eyes blowing wide for a second. He was very bad at hiding his true feelings, his face nothing showing his shock, your question had simply baffled him. He didn’t expect you to, ya know- want him back. This whole thing was an accident after all. As far as he knew, you weren’t malicious or willingly going to give up your soul to him anytime soon.
His eyebrows knit together in confusion, looking you up and down as you waited his response.
“I- Uh.. wha— why?”
Why?
You didn’t know the exact reason. As fucked up as it sounds, Lucifer provided oddly pleasant company. You weren’t used to living on your home so knowing you could enjoy someone’s company whenever you were lonely.
It felt nice knowing someone- or something- was there.
Even if it was the damn devil.
You shrug, avoiding the demons eyes which still looked utterly confused with your intentions.
“I dunno. Why waste the opportunity? What if I need someone killed or… I don’t know, help building furniture?”
You gave your sorry excuse and Lucifer’s gaze on you never changed, looking completely lost at your true intent of what you wanted from him.
He blew out a breath of hot air, chuckling nervously while grabbing his coat and cane. He stood from the floor, brushing dust off his white pants.
“Well- I suppose I can’t really stop you if you decide to summon me back. Just uh.. ahem.. don’t go nuts.”
Lucifer warned, his tone failing to convince you he was serious. You nod, chuckling a bit, and offering a smile to him.
You stand up yourself, looking over at him. You both break eye contact with each other. A moment of silence fell upon you, tension in the air thickening.
Man this was awkward.
Lucifer finally cleared his throat, adjusting his top hat. He shot you finger guns, laughing nervously.
“Uh- so I guess see youlater?…. Alligator…?”
He asks cautiously.
You pinch your side again, there was no way this was the actual devil. When you weren’t jolting awake from your comfortable bed, you couldn’t help but laugh a bit. You gave a small wave to Lucifer.
“In awhile, crocodile.”
You matched his awkward energy. Lucifer seemed surprised but not bothered by your comment back. He simply gave a small giggle, returning your wave before his departure.
In a gentle wave of swirling ruby and pink smoke adorned with golden glitter, Lucifer seemed to have vanished, as if he was never there to begin with.
You stare where he once stood, your heart beating fast against your chest. You gently wave your arm over the spot he once occupied for the last few hours.
Feeling only the wind pass through your arms made everything that just happened feel fake. You look around your living room, spinning in circles almost frantically to find what you wanted.
You quickly picked up your sewing kit that had been abandoned on your couch. Zipping it open, you grab out one of the needles, gently piercing the skin of your index finger.
As quick as he had left, Lucifer was back.
His hat was now gone and he was holding his jacket, presumably about to put it away before being summoned back. He looked around the room, meeting your eyes, then giving you a disapproving look.
“Sorry! Just had to- uh.. good news is it works?”
Lucifer sighed heavily, once again vanishing into a cloud of pink and red. Well it was settled.
The Devil was at your will…
Now what?
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moiraimyths · 10 days
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Howdy, fateful friends! Are you an artist or illustrator with an interest in visual novels?
If so: Moirai Myths, creators of the visual novel The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe), are in need of guest artists! More specifically, we're looking for up to two artists to help us with the content graphics ("CGs") for Maeve and Shae's upcoming routes. All of the details will be listed on our application form (linked below), but here is the gist:
This is paid work with 20-30 business day deadlines per piece!
Complicated revisions in the post-sketch phase are compensated!
You will be prioritized for future guest artist opportunities!
You will be featured/credited on Moirai Myths' website and in the game itself!
Sound interesting? If so, apply here:
Click under the cut for some F&Q 👇
Who are you? (I'm new here!)
Hi! We're Moirai Myths: a small, newish visual novel company based out of Canada. We're making a game inspired by mostly Irish mythology, which was funded on Kickstarter in 2023! Our game's got fairy politics, a diverse cast, a Gaeilge-to-English translation tool, and routes that can be played either romantically or platonically! Also horses. An ungodly amount of horses, really.
If that odd pitch sounded intriguing, perhaps you'd like to play our demo! It's free on Steam & Itch.io.
Why are you looking for guest artists?
When we originally launched our Kickstarter, the plan was to have our three in-house artists collaborate on the CGs in the same way our header image was. However, we quickly realized that adding CGs, even if they're done collaboratively, onto the existing duties of our artists was a tall order. Add to that the departure of our original sprite artist (who has since been replaced by our graphic designer), and we determined that having our in-house team work on CGs was simply not possible if we still wanted our first release to happen in 2024. So, rather than omitting CGs or adding them in at a later time, we came up with the idea of hiring guest artists. Overall this means our CGs will be a bit more varied in terms of art style, but we like to think of this as a positive! NDM's development will take a number of years to complete in full, so we hope our CGs will allow us to feature a lot of artists either within the VN/indie dev community already, or artists who aspire to work in gaming and are looking for entry positions.
How long will applications remain open for?
This application will be open until Sunday, March 24 at midnight (EST)! If we intend to extend past that deadline, we'll make an announcement about it.
I can't apply right now. Will you look for more CG guest artists in the future?
Definitely! As mentioned, NDM will take a while to develop in full, so this is by no means your only opportunity to apply. That being said, we suspect we're going to end up shortlisting a number of artists over the course of this application period, and we intend to keep a list of all the runners-up. So, even if you won't be able to participate this time, it might be a good idea to apply anyway just to remain in our contacts! Either way, this will not be the last time we have apps.
Will you be looking for guest artists outside of CGs?
Maybe! We already have two guest artists (Nefukurou and Madi Funk) working on sprites and CGs respectively, so it's always possible that we'll have other artistic needs later down the line. Likewise, we may also reach out to past guest artists for future work with us, whether it's on this game or something else!
You say we need to sign an NDA. What does that entail?
The non-disclosure agreement essentially means you will be legally unable to publicly disclose any confidential information you become privy to as a result of working with us. This would include personal information about the developers, as well as spoilers from the game itself. In addition do this, you will be expected to sign over the IP and copyright of any artworks you produce for us.
Can I still use my artworks in portfolios, even if I don't own the copyright?
Yes! We'd only ask, if your portfolio is a website, that you wait to do so until after your art has been made public by us, either on our social media or via the publication of the game. Our first release is anticipated to happen later this year, most likely mid-autumn.
How do you guys feel about AI? Do you intend to use it, or would you ever train an AI off of the artworks whose copyright you own?
No.
Making a game is expensive and time-consuming, but AI is no replacement for human artistry. We fundamentally believe that any advancements in AI should be used for the purpose of giving people more time to make art, not take away opportunities for it. Moirai Myths will never, ever use AI or train an AI off your work.
***
If you've got any more questions for us that we didn't think to include here, feel free to send us an ask!
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anonymouspuzzler · 1 month
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you know what? fuck you (heartbreak gulch's my own guys)
(@heartbreakgulch courtesy of the inimitable @strangegutz & collaborators, also miscellaneous Thoughts under the cut bc it's my blog no one can stop me the doors have closed behind you)
HEARTBREAKER BULKHEAD:
Probably does not have superpowers anymore but still came from a family of considerable influence and was under pressure to inherit, pressure which he very much Broke Under.
Turned to a life of crime, definitely got in over his head with it, and essentially got rescued by Eddie, who he is Utterly Obsessed With And Heartsick For.
Has spent literal years as one of Eddie's attack dogs and generally jumping through hoops for him for Whatever Scraps Of Affection He Can Get, though he's still kind of squeamish around Literal Murder and thus tends to be assigned to supply runs and such most of the time.
Amateur mechanic and car enthusiast. Probably did a lot of McGyver-ass fixes around the Gulch-slash-generally assisted Ami til Davey was recruited.
Speaking of, was still the guy who recruited-slash-rescued Davey. They fell for each other hard and are in a committed relationship now, which has helped Buck take a little bit of a healthier step back with whatever the hell he and Eddie have going on (and helped him be a little less jealous and curmudgeonly about the Hot Young Things In Town, ie Zeki and Felix).
Absolutely not prepared to be a guardian to Minnie which has led his and Eddie's whole Relationship to enter a fun new stage of "hey man can I ask you for parenting advice nothing weird"
HEARTBREAKER DYNAMO:
Pretty similar backstory to the Villain-Coded version. Civilian turned criminal, lost his arm when he got in over his head on a job and Buck rescued him.
Has a bunch of different prosthetics he swaps out for different purposes, ie. one for combat, one to use for mechanic work, a kinda general use/everyday one, etc. That said, he goes without a lot to make sure he's prepared for a situation where he doesn't have access/one breaks or fails on a job/etc.
An alarmingly good recruit; I feel like originally Eddie kind of let him stick around as a kind of "gift" to Buck, but now that he's actually got him on jobs he's become a real rising star. Real good in a scrap and is a little more flexible with his moral lines in the sand compared to Buck. Outside of that he works with Ami a lot doing mechanics and repairs - probably interested in learning CompanDroid maintenance/repair but figures it'd be skeevy for him to push that point too much.
He and Eddie have a complicated relationship I think. They'd be kinda suspicious/distrusting of each other but also have a LOT of similarities and work really well together. To say nothing of their respective relationships with Buck.
I don't think he's Trying to Uncle the younger recruits in the Gulch but he definitely Does. He likes White a lot. He and Ami would also definitely get along really well. He is being The Bigger Man and Mature Adult and not giving Felix a wedgie no matter how badly he wants to
HEARTBREAKER(?) MINNIE:
From the same family of prominence as Buck and is currently very much on the run after a failed attempt to kill her own dad.
Extremely a city kid and is Not necessarily adapting well to Middle Of Nowhere Self Sustained Living.
Knew Of Buck but never met him before this so his whole Life and Little Criminal Commune featuring Multiple Guys He's Got SOMETHING Going On With is. it's a lot
Would like to do some crime actually but is A) still a little traumatized and adjusting to the whole Situation and B) 13 Whole Real Human Years Old.
Fascinated by Zeki's whole deal and his work but I think they would absolutely bring out the worst in each other they would fight so much. Autism to autism hostility
Having a very complicated response to White and Ami wherein she thinks they're SO cool but interacting with them at any length would make her realize Things About Herself that she's not consciously ready to confront so just like. Imagine being White and looking over your shoulder and that 13 year old is just Intensely Staring At You Unblinking from around a corner and as soon as she realizes you've seen her she turns around and runs off as fast as she can directly into a wall
Zarita absolutely hitting that Cool Just Slightly Older Kid niche for her.
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